Kazakhstan Adoption » Restaurants

The Pizza Place in Petropavlovsk

Chris — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 17:23:06 +0000

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:

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Good coffee….in Petro!

Chris — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 13:15:00 +0000

So I guess I need to take back a bit of what I said about the coffee in this town. On a recommendation we walked down to a coffee shop on Constitution Ave this morning and it was actually pretty good! I had a caramel cappuccino which I would definitely recommend. The chocolate cake was good as well.

The wait staff don’t speak English so there was a lot of pointing to the menu and grunting but we figured it out.

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It is on the same block as the Italian restaurant.

Turkish Chuck’e'Cheese

Chris — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 15:44:10 +0000

We had dinner a couple of nights back at the Petro version of Chuck’e'Cheese. Otherwise known as the “Turkish Restaurant”, it served a combination of Turkish food and a good selection of “American” food like hamburgers and pizza. Everything is just slightly off though as if they couldn’t resist adding a Kazak spin to it. It was decent food though.

The highlight for our daughter Sam was the playground where she spent most of the meal.

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And just for fun the Google map via GPS (54.873458,69.131320):

Decent bakery near the Hotel Skif

Chris — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 02:08:38 +0000

Our translator took us by a decent bakery (at least by the standards of Petropavlovsk). I grabbed some beef and potato filled pastries for lunch and they were not bad. Apparently the pastries are decent as well although we didn’t sample them this trip.

Bakery in Petropavlovsk

For those that care, this is where it was:

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Decent pizza in Petropavlovsk

Chris — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 15:01:21 +0000

We were getting tired of the food in the hotel so on the advice of another couple who are also adopting we headed out to look for a pizza place they had tried and liked.

The food was decent and although they didn’t have English menus it was cafeteria style so pointing and grunting was sufficient to get what you wanted to eat.

In addition to pizza they served salads, ribs, rice and a range of other sides. It was a pleasant change to what we had been eating for dinner and we’ll be back. I will snag some pictures of the outside of the building and the restaurant itself the next time we go and post them but the highlight of the trek for our daughter Samantha was the attached playground.

For the map deprived (in other words pretty much everyone), here is where the restaurant is located:

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