Italian Restaurant Lunnyj Dvorik. Moon courtyard Moon courtyard

Average bill: from 1500 to 2000 ₽

Kitchen: European, Italian

Book for free! Table reservation via whatsapp

10 reasons to book a table

Table reservation is IS FREE!
Possibility to choose a table, for example: by the window, on the sofas, next to the children's room, a cozy corner, definitely not on the aisle and etc.
Booking a table, in other words, is a notice to the establishment that you maybe planning to visit it.
If you are unable to arrive at the establishment by the specified time or at all, your reservation will simply be canceled after 15 minutes! No one will hold a grudge against you, because there are different situations in life :)
If you do not know the exact number of guests, or the exact time of arrival at the institution, then it is better make a reservation and on the day of the visit, correct or cancel it! This way you will be sure that good tables will remain for you.
When booking a table, you will be sure that you will not be turned around at the entrance to the institution with the words “no seats”, “one place left at the bar”, “we have a banquet” and etc.
You receive an SMS about the reservation, this serves as confirmation for you that the reservation request has been processed and you are expected at the establishment.
The reservation SMS includes the name of the establishment, address, date, time and phone number for making adjustments. If you book by phone of the establishment, SMS is not sent in 90% of cases and prove that you booked a table somewhere - will not work!
Your mobile number and full name indicated in the booking form are only needed to receive confirmation of the booking by SMS! We do not transfer data to third parties and do not spam mailings!
When you book a table attitude towards guests in good establishments is more loyal, for example - "You are expected and will definitely be met", "Landing at a good table".

This story began on a frosty February day, when I received a letter in the mail with a proposal to take a closer look at the restaurant "". After some time, the offer was repeated, and then an invitation followed. I appreciated the perseverance of the representative of the restaurant, made a note and, when it turned out to be a free day off, went to Novaya Basmannaya Street, where, according to the site, the restaurant "Italian home cooking».

Inside a small house, I found a foyer with a wardrobe and two floors decorated in the style of typical Italian trattorias: tablecloths in squares, some old utensils, faded pictures on the walls, a fireplace, a bar counter at the end of the hall, screens with illustrations and rare greenery. Most of the decorations looked old and dilapidated, but there was nothing out of the Italian theme, which could not be said about the menu.

It was chaotic and disturbing. According to the set of positions, the orientation of the institution to banquets and various events was immediately caught. Italy was present there, but in a limited form and was lost among borscht, saltwort, Asian inclusions and pike perch in Polish. Moreover, many sections were inflated to incredible sizes. Pastes - 25 pieces. Salads - 15. Soups - 10. And a separate large block at the beginning of the menu was a "business lunch", and not at all cheap - two dishes for 650 rubles.

Again, if the site is to be believed, the food at Lunar Courtyard is made from tried and tested recipes from Italian housewives, but that's not the case. Food is made from outdated or erroneous recipes and goes from bad to average and back again.

The Chicken Caesar Salad contained undercooked pink chicken, tasteless cheese, and a bland mayonnaise sauce. Not sure how often Italian housewives cook " Meat hodgepodge”, but in the “Moon Courtyard” it turned out sadly insipid, with two types of meat, in a watery broth, without sourness, without spice, without salt. "Pizza Margherita" could have been a good dish, the dough is thin, the sauce is decent, the cheese is in moderation, but it was overexposed in the oven, which caused the cheese to bake and turn into a crispy crust. Spaghetti carbonara was supplied with boiled ham and drowned in cream, so there was no talk of any authenticity, although the spaghetti was cooked correctly. "Tiger Shrimp Curry" was a failure in every way. Firstly, the shrimp were of dubious quality, overcooked, unpleasantly loose in places, rubbery in places. The curry sauce took only the color and, mixed with the cream, turned into an unpleasant greenish liquid. “Home cutlet” really looked like home, only “homemade” did not refer to taste, but to the unprofessional preparation. People usually cook and warm up such cutlets at home on hastily coming home from work, tired and nervous. Plain mixed ground beef, minimum juice, minimum spices and slurred tomato sauce. A similar impression was allegedly left italian dish"Beef stracchetti", which was actually fried meat with mashed potatoes. There was nothing Italian in the dish, the taste was banal, the look was sloppy. But it's one thing to cook this at home, and another thing to serve to guests for 720 rubles. Of the desserts, Panna Cotta was sad and tasteless. The level is below average, both in quality and quantity of sugar.

Service in the yard by the moon was lonely. At lunch on Saturday, one waitress watched the hall, however, there were few visitors. As for the waitress, she was sweet, friendly, a little unsmiling at the beginning and very joyful at the end. Plus, at the end of the meal, she treated me to homemade limoncello, even if it was warm.

The bottom line is this.

I won't be surprised if the restaurant focuses on banquets, weddings, birthdays and corporate events for everyday needs. I suppose that in pursuit of customers, the menu grew for a long time and gradually. But since the establishment has declared itself an "authentic Italian restaurant", it needs to comply with this definition, which means - do not inflate the menu for dozens of pages, do not scatter the efforts of the kitchen on borscht and curry, do not clutter up the "business lunch" section with anything and everything definitely not use a recipe that falls short of Italian standards.

Publication from Mikhail Kostin (@mkostin_ru) Jun 9 2017 at 10:23 PDT

Sun & Moon greeted me with huge display windows and a glass door, behind which a security guard and a metal detector frame blocked the way. Although for our city this design is a familiar thing, it was strange to see it in a restaurant, and even on Bolshaya Nikitskaya. In addition to not being the most aesthetically pleasing view, the frame also proved to be an inconvenient obstacle, because, being in it, I had to clumsily go around the guard and pull the next door towards me in order to squeeze through further.

Already inside, a small two-story room delighted with its friendly and calm decoration. Downstairs there was a square dining area, a miniature bar that overlooked fragments of the kitchen, wide stairs leading up to a balcony and down to some kind of secret room and toilets. The walls were decorated with wooden panels, a bright aquarium and green inserts. The furniture was colorful, comfortable and pleasant to the touch. The mosaic floor looked creative and playfully played with the rays of the sun streaming through the windows. But it was not without its downsides.

Firstly, the restaurant abandoned the cloakroom. Secondly, a transparent refrigerator was placed next to the stairs, from which rare meat bran with a shiny watery coating was observed from the guests. However, it was not the meat that alerted me, but the back panel of the refrigerator, which was covered with stains that looked like handprints. Perhaps it was frost, but the impression of untidyness and dirt was immediately created in the head. Thirdly, despite the fact that the outer surface of the refrigerator often heats up, it was leaned against an open wine rack without much concern for the wine.

The menu at Sun & Moon is large, old-fashioned, largely Italian-French, and steeped in nostalgic memories of the Eldorado restaurant, which used to work opposite the Udarnik cinema in the old days. There are many positions, the names are bunched up, the font is small, the descriptions are limited. The price tag is average for the center.

The food during my visit was mostly edible, but not catchy and looked like a selection for a business lunch.

Roast beef with chanterelle mousse, 640 ₽
Vegetable salad“Eldorado” with “Vinegra” sauce, 450 ₽
Cream soup “Porcini” with porcini mushrooms, 560 ₽
, 710 ₽
Beef tenderloin, 410 ₽
Catfish fillet with green pea puree, baked tomatoes and smoked sauce, 620 ₽
Norwegian ice cream - complement (in the menu 340 rubles), 0 ₽
Water Aqua Panna 0.75, 500 ₽

“Cream soup “Porcini” with porcini mushrooms” caused bewilderment even at the stage of familiarization with the menu. Translated from Italian, porcini means porcini mushrooms, and therefore it is not very clear why it was necessary to mention them twice, while forgetting to talk about potatoes, the taste of which was felt no less than mushroom. In addition to potatoes and mushrooms, the soup also caught the acid of white wine, which interfered and distracted.

“Eldorado vegetable salad with Vinaigr sauce” sent me greetings from the 90s. Purchased combination salad mix, olives, cucumber circles, tomato slices, bell pepper, cubes of feta cheese and boiled quail eggs with caviar brought back memories of how we ate 20 years ago in the conditions of rapidly developing capitalism. Edible, but without any delight. Perhaps, if the dish had more Vinegr sauce, it would have been perceived differently, but the sauce was given out little and it did not captivate in any way.

"Roast beef with chanterelle mousse" actually contained two separate dishes. Large layers of hard-chewing meat in a light oily dressing had their own party, and delicious, tender mushroom mousse had their own. Between themselves, they did not intersect and did not even try to work together to form a delicious harmony.

Tagliatelle with lamb stew with porcini mushrooms in pink sauce is a good quality dish for every day. The lamb is soft, falling apart into delicious fibers, the mushrooms are palpable. Sauce - tomato, slightly creamy, peppy. The pasta was cooked correctly, spices were not spared. Not Italy, of course, but tasty.

The "Beef Tenderloin" from the "Open Fire Meat" section turned out to be a standard piece of regular, average meat, a little tough around the edges and a bit dry inside. Not chic or delight, but for 410 rubles it’s somehow even inconvenient to make unnecessary claims to a steak.

“Catfish fillet with mashed green peas, baked tomatoes and smoked sauce” alerted me right away. The smell from the scanty strip of gray fish emanated suspicious, unappetizingly sour. The appearance of the dish did not cause delight either: a slap of green mashed potatoes, a blot white sauce, a few drops of oil, a bunch of lettuce, a couple of tomatoes and dry fish, which I tried, but refused to eat. It became scary.

But the dessert "Norwegian ice cream", which I got as a present from the institution, was good. On a white plate, in a circle of red berries, sat a tower of ice cream, biscuit, meringue, and strawberries. The taste balance was maintained. Each element played its role and did not stick out. The sweetness was felt to the fullest, but it did not come to cloying.

The service on my visit was friendly and inexperienced. The girls did their best, but they failed to avoid mistakes, as well as a broken terminal for receiving cards, which I found out at the end of the meal. The kitchen was slow. Perhaps this was due to the fact that people in everyday outerwear appeared there every now and then, squeezing past food, pots and pans.

The bottom line is this:

As I stepped out of Sun & Moon, the thought swirled around in my head that this restaurant would be the best place for the stray tourists and football fans who will soon be flooding our city. I won’t be surprised if the Sun and the Moon was opened specifically for the summer, namely for the World Cup. What will happen to him next? And then, a new interior, a new menu, a new chef brand and a beautiful word "rebranding".