Solyanka, Home-Style

The word "solyanka" is an altered name of the dish "selyanka", that is, a rural, country dish, and in a broader sense — peasant food in general. Over time, however, the letter "e" was replaced with "o" and selyanka turned into solyanka. Because of its saltiness and spiciness, solyanka is often recommended for alcohol intoxication.

Here I find myself wondering - what new and interesting thing can be written about "Solyanka"? Everyone who ventures out dancing even once every six months already knows about this Moscow club phenomenon. And they know it not from publications like "Afisha" or "Kommersant" (though information leaks through there too), and not from photographs posted on nightlife websites – photography is forbidden in the club – but from the words of friends and acquaintances. The project's organisers believe that this way potential visitors will form the truest and most accurate understanding of what goes on here. Now, when the club has been operating successfully for half a year, it's hard not to agree with such an understanding of this matter.

Meat Solyanka (Assorted)
Cook a meat-and-bone broth and strain it. Cool the meat in part of the broth. Free the kidneys of the membrane, cut lengthwise, cover with cold water and soak for 3–4 hours, changing the water periodically. Rinse, cover with cold water again and cook for 1–1.5 hours until done at a gentle boil. Cut the peeled onion into half-rings, sweat it covered in butter until soft, add tomato and sweat until the butter takes on colour and separates from the tomato. Peel the cucumbers of skin and seeds, cut into slices, add broth and simmer for 10 minutes. Pit the olives. Separate the capers from the brine. Cut the boiled beef and kidneys, ham and frankfurters into thin slices. Put the meat mix, the sweated onion and tomato, the simmered cucumbers, green olives, capers, bay leaf, pepper and salt into a pot and pour in the broth. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat, let it steep for 15 minutes. When serving, ladle into bowls, add black olives and sour cream. Place a slice of lemon on top and sprinkle with herbs.
Ingredients:
Broth - 1.6 l; bones – 300 g; beef - 250 g; beef kidneys - 140 g; gammon or ham - 100 g; frankfurters or sausages - 90 g; onion - 200 g; tomato purée; butter - 40 g; salted cucumbers - 200 g; green olives - 40 g; capers - 80 g; black olives - 80 g; lemon; sour cream - 160 g; spices - to taste; chopped herbs.

The mansion on "Solyanka" is easy to recognise in the evening – the club's windows are lit with shimmering soft floodlights, but by day it's not so easy to find – there's neither a sign nor any identifying mark. Inside, besides the bar, the club and a restaurant with free wi-fi, there's also the designer boutique Twins Shopp, run by the twins Yulya and Inga. In general, the club premises have everything you need to never leave at all: "Solyanka" is a place people can come to in the morning with a laptop and crawl out the next morning in new clothes, still drunk, having blown off work, but happy.

"Solyanka" is home-style cosy and warm; this effect is achieved largely thanks to furniture bought at London sales of school equipment (some chairs still bear inscriptions like "fuck you Tom"); partly because the club's very layout looks like the flats of Khrushchev-era favourites – a wide, long corridor, two rooms with sofas and tables, a dancefloor like a living room for holding society soirées. All this intimacy coexists beautifully with a huge pixel video screen called a ColorKinetics, with the ball lamps by Tom Dixon abundantly hung by the bar, with the glowing and, as it were, actively bouncing ceiling. In general, everything is done so skilfully and harmoniously that it's pleasant to be in the club both when the hall is empty and when it's packed. The design was developed by Kira Grishina; in St. Petersburg she had a hand in such projects as "Onegin" and the restaurant "Imbir".

Cutty Ranks at Solyanka

The club's staff – as a continuation of the home theme – are friendly and welcoming; no one will shush you or look down their nose at you, sizing up the possible thickness of your wallet. Standing in the queue for "Solyanka", I've talked with the security more than once. Unlike at most clubs, here they are
genuinely human, and they look at guests as people, not as an abstract flow of cash.

Speaking of people. It seems they and the music are the most important links here. There's no clear-cut image of a "Solyanka" visitor; it could be anyone: you, me, your friends. An important facet of "Solyanka" is eclecticism, in the design, in the crowd, and in the musical content. The people who come here can be anyone: from a lover of Jamaican reggae in baggy garb with dreadlocks on his head to a refined aesthete in a Prada coat, and in some inexplicable way they'll be perfectly comfortable in one place.

Vegetable Solyanka
Braise the cabbage in oil, add cucumber, mushrooms, carrot and onion cut into strips, season with sugar, salt and pepper. Add tomato purée and braise the vegetables with the mushrooms until done. Before serving, garnish with black olives and capers.
Ingredients:
Sauerkraut - 200 g; salted cucumbers - 1 pc.; carrot - 1 pc.; marinated mushrooms - 50 g; onion - 1 bulb; vegetable oil - 1 tbsp; sugar - 1 tsp; tomato purée - 1 tsp; black olives - 10 g; capers - 10 g; ground black pepper, salt to taste.

You can only make sense of the party schedule with a calculator to hand – that's how many there are: on Thursdays the Moscow crew Flamable Beats spins hip-hop here, and once a month, as part of that party, Mystic Night takes place, to which various reggae-ragga and hip-hop performers from Jamaica come to play. On Fridays the veterans of the Moscow techno sound Anton Kubikov and Sergey Sapunov take to the decks, and they often bring colleagues from the trade, like Kollektiv Turmstrasse, Kompakt's Popnoname or Martin Buttrich. The result is tech-house parties without crackle, crunch and rustle, but with melody, groove and drunken fun.

Thriller at Solyanka

That said, crunch and rustle (like storm and stress) are appropriate too. At the Tech It Easy parties, run by Nadya-Facecontrol, the best Moscow minimalists play: BVoice, Chizh, Vadim Lankov. Saturday is a "floating" day; once a month it's Thriller – arguably the loudest of "Solyanka's" parties, where Mr. Oizo has performed, the fashion designer Denis Simachev has spun records, and the legendary old-school ravers Utah Saints have come. The queue in front of the club doesn't disappear until about five in the morning. There are Sanchez's Deep4Water parties with clever drum-and-bass; the private parties of Sergey Sergeev – they always have different names; LenBeat – a tribute to Petersburg DJs and musicians.

Speaking of Piter. "Solyanka" owes a great deal to that city: nearly half the people involved in the project hail from the northern capital. Some have even called "Solyanka" the most Petersburg club in Moscow, and such statements are entirely fitting.

Solyanka with Shrimp
Boil the shrimp, peel them, cut the flesh into pieces. Cut the onion into half-rings, lightly fry it in part of the oil, add the tomato paste and fry for another 10 minutes. Cut the cucumbers into strips and simmer them in a small amount of broth for 10–15 minutes. Put the prepared cucumbers, onion, capers, salt and pepper into the boiling broth and cook the soup for 5–10 minutes. At the end add the bay leaf, season the solyanka with sour cream and bring to the boil. When serving, put pieces of the boiled shrimp, black olives and slices of lemon into the solyanka. Sprinkle with herbs.
Ingredients:
Shrimp - 400 g; salted cucumbers - 2-3 pcs.; onion - 1 pc.; vegetable oil - 4 tbsp; tomato paste - 2 tbsp; pitted black olives - 12 pcs.; capers - 1 tbsp; sour cream - 4 tbsp; chicken broth - 4 cups; lemon - 1/2 pc.; chopped parsley - 1 tbsp; bay leaf - 1/2 pc.; black peppercorns, salt to taste.

The sound here really is the best in Moscow; the system is called Funktion One and absolutely everyone likes it – from the club's residents and owners to the party-goers and the salespeople at the DJ-Pro shop. "Evaluating the club from a DJ's point of view, first of all I want to emphasise the unique Funktion One system, as well as the serious, deep attention to everything – from the little buttons at the DJ table to the little lights on the dancefloor. Besides, when the club was still being built, we all took part in designing the DJ booth, right down to determining the height of the table, which was also made specially for the club", – shares "Solyanka" resident Sergey Sapunov.

Dj Baku at Solyanka

The only fly in the ointment lies in the process of getting into the club. There's no harsh face-control or inflated ticket prices – they cost 300-500 roubles – it's just that there's only one door and a lot of people, so the prospect of breathing the frosty air, warming yourself against the bodies of fellow sufferers while waiting for the legendary Nadya-Facecontrol, who previously stood at the entrance of Zeppelin and Gazgolder, for a good 30 minutes is quite likely.

That said, the "Solyanka" people know about this problem and are trying every which way to solve it, installing metal corridors and discussing possible solutions on the club's own web resource, while for now they ask guests to arrive early.

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