Eastern Promises
An Upscale Russian Madhouse of a Restaurant

Today, a moment of silence.

The Pizzeria Uno on 6th Avenue has passed on.

But it didn’t die in vain.

It died so that we can have osetra caviar, horseradish vodka... and models named Svetlana.

Introducing Onegin (pronounced “on-again”), a one-time pizza parlor that’s been transformed into a madhouse of Russian indulgence, in previews now and opening next week.

If you’re an oligarch or owner of the New Jersey Nets, this is where you’ll go when your usual palace just isn’t opulent, caviar-y or crazy enough. You’ll find smoked sturgeon by crystal-chandelier light. House-infused honey-pepper vodka from a bar made of 200-year-old Ukrainian birch. And borscht. Delivered to your red velvet throne by butler-jacket-wearing waiters.

Whether you head left, to the aforementioned bar, or right, past 19th-century carriage seats and into the brocade dining room, all roads lead to vodka. Available in a carafe, a cocktail or the spiked fisherman’s soup (next-level comfort food). 

The rest of the menu comes courtesy of the city’s only operational Russian pechka, a wood-burning furnace that would have once been used to heat a czar’s castle. Now, it’ll heat your quail on a stick.

And while you wait between courses of pike caviar and pork belly pâté, you’ll read Pushkin. Passages from his stories, sketches and secret journals have been etched around the restaurant in goose-feather quill.

It’s been a while since you lost yourself in a good ceiling.