Thoughtfully and mockingly, they look from below and above, from the floor and from the ceiling. Wrapped in thick glass and heavy frames, in the twilight of the new Francois restaurant, models Da Vinci and Rembrandt look at the tops of visitors and knees of their companions. In Moscow, where restaurateurs wage a real war for gourmets and aesthetes, the new restaurant in Gostiny Dvor should be declared the undisputed winner of this season. The first thing that a Francois visitor sees is a three-meter tower of empty gilded frames, shimmering with colored lights. The tower and the huge reproductions of Renaissance portraits are both straight and extremely refined images. Simply and effectively, they announce a meeting with French cuisine, which is to be enjoyed by Francois visitors, and also simply and effectively equalize gastronomy with high art. And in the space bounded by the basement vaults of Gostiny Dvor, it is difficult not to believe this maximalist statement. There is not a single ill-conceived detail, every little thing (dishes, tablecloths and napkins, wall textures, lighting) works on a common plan, which, against all established traditions, grew not from a gastronomic, but from a design concept. The cuisine of the French Riviera, in which hedonism is combined with the utmost sophistication, the restaurant owners have chosen as the most adequate idea for the design of the restaurant. Angela Moiseeva and Valeriy Lizunov, who owns a beautiful and blasphemous idea of trampling the masterpieces of world art at dinner, are perhaps the most fashionable catering architects in Moscow. They made the infernal cafe Poison, the conceptual "Bad Cafe" and the luxurious white club First - all without exception of the "bomb" in the restaurant and interior world. In Francois, a close look will notice the typical signs of the style of this architectural duet - thoughtful contrasts of warm and cold, games with lighting, close attention to textures ... But the main thing, of course, is the lightness and wit with which the Francois authors put their ideas into life: combining in one space, simple, almost industrial materials with luxurious textures and objects, not limiting themselves to the framework of styles and trends, reporting exclusively to their own sense of beauty.
Passing the gallery 
