Before the midnight train Red Arrow to St. Petersburg, we had pletny of hours to kill. Plenty. Considering the forecast was for a 30C humid and rainy day, it made sense to pay £21 for a room even though we didn't use it for the night. The station is Krasnye Vorota, and I can't imagine they see a whole lot of tourist traffic.
Nearby there was an Uzbek place (Uryuk) that interested me, but also a Buryat one which seemed a bit more unique and harder to find elsewhere. The Buryat region of Russia bordered Mongolia and it seemed like the head staff and a lot of customers were Buryat or Mongolian.
None of the staff spoke English. None of the menu was in English. My Google auto-translate struggled. We chose food based upon pictures. Even though we may not have chosen that well in the end, I wouldn't have the experience any other way.
A simple beef soup started us off. Meaty and delicious. Chewy soft pieces of beef and bits of noodles.
The meat platter comprised of some fried small dumplings which were nice, and some big ones which tasted of Australian dim sims (odd, but I'm sure the quality of ingredients was better...) with some liquid. Fish shaped fried parcels had mutton pieces with a boiling hot very fatty delicious liquid inside that congealed when it spilled on plates underneath. Lamb cutlets were boiled/braised with a slightly sweet flavour, cooked throughout (rather than the Western medium-rare) but still remained soft. A sweet tomato sauce accompanied the lot. It was all nice but a bit too similar in flavour - meat and meat.