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Snack ... |
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As a city in development, Astana lacks the cozy corner café that makes the difference between a good and a great Sunday morning. The closest thing is Pizza City. It may sound like a hideous neon chain, but is in fact a small stylish café on the Right Bank (although the service and food are not yet in line with Western expectations) whose growing popularity will, hopefully, presage more of the same. If you find yourself on the Left Bank, head for Café Marzipan on the Central Boulevard, which is a good place to relax after some serious sightseeing, or try the Lobby in the Rixos which is one of the most popular meeting places in town and also offers free WiFi access. |
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With the opening of a number of new shopping malls in 2008, new coffee shops will arrive in Astana including Gloria Jean’s, the Turkish answer to Starbucks.
There are a number of café-style restaurants in Astana including Kishlak and Samovar (below) at the KazMunaiGas end of the Central Boulevard, both of which offer quick, tasty food and are great for more informal lunches. |
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| Click links to view the details. |
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Bar Fontan, Sine Tempore Shopping Mall, 1st Floor, Kenesary Street, AREA |
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Café Marzipan, 1 Magistralnii Street (by the Square of the Singing Fountains), AREA |
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Corso Café, 18 Imanov Street (between Respublik and Valikhanov), AREA |
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Fifty-Fifty, 16 Respublik Avenue, AREA |
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Kishlak, 22/2 Kabanbai Batyr Avenue, Kruglaya Ploshad |
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La Belle, 12 Irchenko Street, AREA |
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Pizza City, 17 Imanov Street (between Respublik and Valikhanov), AREA |
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Samovar, 22/2 Kabanbai Batyr Avenue, Kruglaya Ploshad |
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Bar Fontan, Sine Tempore Shopping Mall, 1st Floor, Kenesary Street, AREA
Tel : 753 906
Open : Daily, 10am–10pm |
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For a small café in the middle of a shopping mall, Bar Fontan is surprisingly popular whatever time of the day you visit. Serving juice, cocktails, cakes, salads and pizzas, this buzzing little café is run by the nearby Venezia restaurant (see Eat), and is a good place to drop in if you’re tired from walking around the old town
on the Right Bank. The menu (apart from the pizzas) is in Russian and the staff do not speak English, but it’s not hard to get your intentions made clear in a coffee shop, especially since there’s no chance of getting a hazelnut triple shot skinny latte here – just espresso and cappuccino. |
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Café Marzipan, 1 Magistralnii Street (by the Square of the Singing Fountains), AREA
Tel : 8 701 551 4897
Open : Daily, 10am–2am |
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| Opened in May 2007, Café Marzipan is the first coffee shop to open on the Left Bank A great place to pop in for a fresh juice if you’re sightseeing along the monumental Central Boulevard and situated only a few minutes walk from the President’s White House and Baiterek, Café Marzipan offers a lunchtime menu of snacks and sandwiches (as well as a 15% discount). From November 2007, there are plans to offer free wifi, so if you need to get connected, this could be the place to catch up on your emails. The comfy orange sofas and spacious interior translates well into a night-time spot when the café is at its busiest, serving cocktails to exhausted civil servants who work nearby. |
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Corso Café, 18 Imanov Street (between Respublik and Valikhanov), AREA
Tel : 22 12 49
Open : Daily, 10am–1am |
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| Busiest at lunchtime and after the nine o’clock watershed, Corso Café is located in the heart of Astana’s Right Bank. While this comfy cafe is still some way off the ultimate ‘cosy corner café’, it is one of the very few cafés Astana has to offer. In some ways it’s more like a small bar than a café, with its smoky atmosphere and the fact that it serves alcohol until well after midnight. Attractive, however, is that the fact that it serves a simple menu of breakfast and desserts from 10am. Located next to Tiflis (see Eat), it’s a nice place to pop in and finish the evening off with a cappuccino (or nightcap) and something sweet. |
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Fifty-Fifty, 16 Respublik Avenue, AREA
Tel : 21 58 58
Open : Daily, noon (2pm Sun)–midnight (2am Sat) |
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| Fifty-Fifty refers to Kazakhstan’s geographical location between Europe and Asia, and explains why the food on offer is both Eastern (Japanese) and European, a fact that most restaurants in town don’t bother to offer any explanation for. At any rate, Fifty-Fifty is a good place to pop into on Respublik Avenue, the main street in the old town, if you’re having sushi withdrawal in the heart of the steppe. The sushi menu has all the usual rolls and sashimi, and there’s even a room for children with pint-sized tables and chairs. To round off your meal why not try the Japanese ice cream or cherry and lemon cakes. |
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Kishlak, 22/2 Kabanbai Batyr Avenue, Kruglaya Ploshad
Tel : 974 161 or 974 142
Open : Daily, noon–2am |
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A sister venture to the Russian Samovar next door, Kishlak, which means village, is just as the name suggests. Walk in over a stream, past a tree and enter a small Central Asian courtyard with raised platforms, carved pillars, painted and decorated beams, trellises covered with vines and pictures of the
Uzbek town of Khiva painted on the walls. The waiters wear tipitecas (Uzbek caps) and the waitresses wear ikat printed kurtas and pink silk trousers. In view of the décor, we think it’s worth sticking to the Eastern food on the menu, although European food is also available. Try the laghman – a local noodle dish which can be fried or steamed and is served in attractive earthenware dishes from Uzbekistan. The lepioshka, Uzbek bread with onion seeds, is delicious and reminiscent of fresh bread from the bazaar in Samarkand. On weekdays Kishlak attracts an older business crowd, which becomes progressively younger, and more rowdy, at the weekends. |
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La Belle, 12 Irchenko Street, AREA
Tel : 230 600
Website :
www.labelle.kz
Open : Noon–midnight (2am Thurs–Sat). Closed Sundays. |
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| With its exposed glazed brick walls, shuttered windows with flower-filled window boxes, and murals of French street scenes, La Belle café aims to convince that you’re actually sitting in the heart of Montmartre. If that’s not enough francophilia, they play French classical music and serve 50 different types of coffee and over 35 types of chai, or should we say thé? As the city’s very first coffee shop, La Belle is unique (at least for Astana) and does not serve food, unless you count a host of tasty-looking desserts, and concentrates, instead, on perfecting its variety of specialty coffees to keep you warm once the temperature starts to drop. Only a short walk from the Radisson Hotel, La Belle offers WiFi (free for the first hour) and also has a spa by the same name next door (just in case that cappuccino gets you thinking about a massage). |
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Pizza City, 17 Imanov Street (between Respublik and Valikhanov), AREA
Tel : 20 09 65
Open : Daily, 8am–2am |
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| While the name may not have most clamouring at the door, Pizza City has to be the hippest café in town. Its refreshingly cool interior with red and gold lotus printed wallpaper, stark white tables and chairs, bright orange mats, and low-slung white leather sofas could come straight from the heart of New York City. Understandably so, Pizza City attracts a trendy crowd who come to drink and eat the eponymous pizzas and pasta late into the night. Time your visit earlier (Pizza City opens at 8am daily), and take advantage of some peace and quiet, as well as tucking into their continental breakfast with croissants and jam, muesli and yoghurt, and fresh fruit. It may not be the Ritz, but it certainly is ritzy; if you want to see Astana à la mode (or just sip on a cappuccino), we highly recommend it. |
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Samovar, 22/2 Kabanbai Batyr Avenue, Kruglaya Ploshad
Tel : 974 171
Open : Daily, noon–2am |
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| Samovar is a traktir, the Russian equivalent of an Italian trattoria or a French bistro. It achieves this status partly through homely surroundings divided into a number of small rooms, and partly through a menu of home-cooked favourites. It’s a great place for lunch, you can sit back in a wood-panelled room with an old Russian tiled stove in the corner and choose from a wide selection of blinis (pancakes), soups and meat dishes prepared in a hot skillet. To complement your meal, try some compote, a traditional Russian juice made from stewed fruits, or if you fancy a lunchtime vodka shot, they’ll even give you a piece of lemon with coffee and sugar on it to bite afterwards – apparently a Russian tradition…If you’re not on the Left Bank at lunchtime, there is a second, slightly less formal, branch of Samovar on the Right Bank at 24 Kenesary Street (just past the Sine Tempore Shopping Mall). |
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