Lunch menu

Many places in St. Petersburg offer either a 20% discount on their à la carte menu or a set lunch menu. If you find a 30% discount consider yourself lucky: nobody’s going to waste precious dinero at dinner time (Russians call it ‘dinner time’, not ‘lunch time’). A set lunch menu is almost always called ‘business-lunch’. For a good reason: the crowds flocking eateries in early afternoon predominantly consist of office superheroes, and that’s the only time of day when you see more human males than human females eating out. Lunch offers are available from 12 PM through 4 PM (rarely 5 PM) on weekdays. Food in a set menu tends to be less enticing than in a regular carte. Lunch menus always get a hard blow from cost-cutting and fall off the gastronomic cliff into the realm of Soviet cuisine, whatever that means. Usually that means a vegie salad, a soup, a main course garnished with rice or potatoes. Want to have a refreshment drink with your meal and coffee afterwards? Be so kind as to pay extra for at least one of these delights. That said, lunch menus are there for a greater good: 250-300 ₽ will buy you a decent meal that will get you through the day.