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Baku
Restaurants
By Andra Kunstberga.
14.08.2013
This Azeri restaurant's hard to find, in the city and on the internet. But once you’re there it’s worth the effort.
The new restaurant Baku has just launched a website, bakurestorans.lv, giving a touch more data. We suggest you liaise with your hotel to find a taxi driver who knows it.
Located just beyond the city limits, so that the furthest high-rises are just out of sight, Baku is set by a leafy road in a modern-looking mansion. Sweeping steps lead straight into a spacious chandeliered dining room full of huge windows and smartly dressed waiters. The décor is dazzling, perhaps too much, with eastern sofas and Caucasian and Central Asian designs.
Baku is not a place for the impatient. It’s for reclining with friends or a loved one for a full evening. Dishes to head for on the extensive menu include the best pork, bastirma, lula and other shashlik (kebabs) in Latvia (all €6.50).
Plov is not just an Uzbek favorite; it’s widespread in Azerbaijan too. But you’ll need to order this filling rice-based dish in advance as it’s cooked specially in a traditional qazan (€10-14). Sadzh also needs preordering; this variety of meat-based dishes takes five hours to cook inside a loaf of bread. When it’s ready you cut the top off and eat. The real taste of Azerbaijan can be experienced too in the mangal salad (€5) with grilled and spiced eggplant, tomatoes and peppers.
European wines, classic cocktails, cognacs and whiskies are in abundance at Baku. Spend €180 on 50ml of Louis XIII de Rémy Martin. As we went to press, no one at Baku had yet done so.
