Butler

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Sicilian Kitchen in a Moscow Mansion

In a two-storey manor house on Trekhprudny Pereulok, steps from Patriarshy Ponds, Butler occupies one of central Moscow's more quietly distinguished addresses. The restaurant is built around Mediterranean cuisine with a strong Sicilian backbone — and the person responsible for that identity is chef Giuseppe Davì.

Giuseppe Davì and His Sicilian Roots

Davì was born in northern Italy but spent every summer with his grandmother in Sicily, where his feeling for the island's produce and traditions took hold. He started working in professional kitchens at sixteen, and his résumé includes stints with Michelin-starred chefs: Claudio Ruta at La Fenice (one star) and Pino Cuttaia at La Madia (two stars). In Moscow, he spent seven years leading the kitchen at the legendary Semifreddo, during which the restaurant appeared on the San Pellegrino World's Best lists and in the Le Soste guide. That track record, and the Gambero Rosso recognition Butler has since earned, reflects a chef who treats Italian culinary tradition with genuine respect rather than performance.

The Menu

The cooking draws directly on what Davì learned in Sicily. Among the starters, carpaccio of red Sicilian prawns with citrus sauce and mint, carpaccio of marinated scallop with orange, radish, celery and mullet bottarga, and ceviche of red snapper with passion fruit sauce all show the kitchen's preference for clean, precise flavours. An octopus salad — a classic of southern Italian tables — arrives here with potato mousse, Kenyan beans and sun-dried tomatoes: the tradition is intact, the arrangement is the chef's own.

The pasta and risotto section follows Italian culinary canon closely: handmade ravioli stuffed with burrata, spinach and tomato; pappardelle with guinea fowl ragù; saffron and asparagus risotto; and bottoni with sea bass, crudaiola sauce and red prawns. Main courses include Chilean sea bass with asparagus and tomatoes confit, duck breast with pear and port sauce, and roasted lamb shoulder with seasonal vegetables. Desserts worth noting are the white chocolate sphere with meringue and fresh raspberries, and the limoncello baba — Davì's own riff on the classic rum baba — served with strawberry sorbet.

The Space

The interiors were designed by Megre Interiors. Plasterwork mouldings and powder-toned walls sit alongside classic European furniture, tartan curtains and vintage crystal chandeliers — a deliberately eclectic mix that reads as both formal and genuinely comfortable. Designer Yuna Megre planned the space to flex: from an intimate fireside room for twenty guests to full-scale receptions for 130. Tucked behind a bookcase at the back of the main hall is the entrance to a boutique hotel. When the weather allows, a courtyard terrace opens, shaded by canopies and surrounded by flowering plants — a setting that makes the noise of the city feel remarkably distant.