Moscow restaurant draws on collective Soviet nostalgia – and adds a salad bar

Named after communal housing in the days of the USSR, Kommunalka features an authentic menu, homemade vodka and a washing line

The first thing to know about the new Kommunalka restaurant in Moscow is that the experience is all about nostalgia rather than fine dining. The name, Kommunalka, means “communal apartment” – a flat shared by two or more families of the kind that was widespread in the Soviet Union until the 1980s.

This appeal to Soviet sentiment has been tried before, most successfully at Russian restaurant magnate Arkady Novikov’s bar Kamchatka, but Kommunalka takes it one step further.