The Pizza Place in Petropavlovsk

We stumbled upon a new restaurant a week or so back. Going by the name “The Pizza Place” as well as “The New Turkish Restaurant” it is focused on kids and has a decent collection of Turkish food like kabobs as well as a pretty extensive collection of western food like pizza, hamburgers and chicken wings. It is a popular place for dinner for couples in the middle of adoptions.

The food is sort of what you would expect from a place like this – good but not great – and like most of the restaurants in Kazakhstan that try to do western fare they don’t quite get it right. But it is a nice change from the food at the hotel. The breaded hamburgers were a special surprise.

Of course the giant blow-up playground was the only thing Sam was interested in although we did manage to get a bit of food in her between rounds. The meatballs were particularity popular.

Some shots of the place:

Almaty places #4 in a Business Week survey

Ok…it was the top worst places to work in the world but hey, any PR is good PR right? Almaty got #4 on the study done by Business Week. They commented:

“The remoteness of Almaty, largest city in Kazakhstan, is one of the city’s biggest problems as far as outsiders are concerned. Other significant hardships include pollution, the threat of disease, and poor medical facilities. “Inadequate infrastructure, substandard housing, crime and difficulties with communications are additional drawbacks,” says ORC.”

I just spent three days in Almaty and while I didn’t get to do any sightseeing (the US Embassy was nice…) the city seemed decent. The streets were clean, the trees were coming into bloom which was a sight for sore eyes after the winter weather we’ve been having in Petro and the downtown area looked nicer than a number of major cities I’ve been to around the world. From a glance at the “attractions” list in the hotel it also seemed that there was at least enough to see to burn a few days looking around.

The hotels do manage to ding the credit card pretty hard though. A night at the Hyatt made my wallet about $450 lighter but I definitely recommend a stop to eat at their Grill Room. Yum. Funny thing was that the Hyatt in New York City quoted me $339 for the same night. Competition is a wonderful thing.

The full Business Week article is here.