Astoria Russian Bisstro

Yummy borscht!!!  Love how legit the Russian cooking is...hard to find in STL.

Amazing!!!  Our son is taking a Russian class so he really wanted Russian food. We took him here as a special outing. The food was really good. The service was amazing. Three girls bounced around taking care of all the tables. They were very attentive and we never went without full glasses and someone checking on things. While some people commented about the price, each of our entrees were $16, we all left with plenty of leftovers. The price was fair when looking at the amount of food and atmosphere. We also shared an appetizer dumpling and dessert dumpling. Those two dishes were my favorite part of the meal. They were fresh tasting dumplings and the filling seemed very fresh. The girls were all very nice and one spent some time at our table talking about Russia and our son's class.

We recently went back to Astoria with a Groupon, and boy has it gone DOWNHILL!!!  The fact that we were the only patrons on Saturday at 6 pm should have told us something, but we thought maybe it was just a fluke and stayed anyway.  First of all, the music was so loud, we all had to raise our voices to hear each other.  (Note-we were the only ones there!!!)  Then, the service was horrendous!!!  While they did smile and nod a lot, the servers (yes, we had 3 different ones) couldn't understand nor speak English.  (Note - English is NOT my 1st language either, but come on!)  It took 3 requests to get all of us our drinks + a glass of water (which all came out at different times).  When the water finally arrived, there was lipstick on the glass, and the water was off-colored (brownish).  Not good.  The food also arrived at different intervals and not with the sides originally ordered, so some of us ate while the others looked on.  Since we were starving, we just let the whole wrong food misshap go.  I will admit that the food itself was ok (6 out of 10 - the borscht was luke warm), but there is NO WAY I would go back given the poor tableside manners/lack of customer service orientation of this establishment.  It's really unfortunate as there really is no other choices for Russian cuisine in town.  :(