Identical twins Sergey and Ivan Berezutskiy are at the forefront of contemporary Russian cooking with their Moscow restaurant Twins Garden, which launched as Twins in 2014 and relocated and renamed in the autumn of 2017. Between them, the Berezutskiys have worked in some of the most cutting-edge kitchens in the world. Sergey worked at Grant Achatz’s three Michelin starred Alinea in Chicago, whilst Ivan’s CV includes El Bulli and El Celler de Can Roca.

During regular trips across Russia, the brothers have cultivated a wide knowledge of the country’s vast natural larder and use everything from air dried goose, creamy Adighei cheese from the Caucasus Mountains, muksun a Siberian whitefish with a delicate flavour similar to salmon that they freeze, finely slice and serve with an anchovy sauce – to giant king crabs from the Kamchatka peninsula in the Russian far east and obscure herbs including the peppery, horseradish-like sverbiga. In 2017, they acquired a 120-acre farm in Russia’s Kaluga region and many of the ingredients served at Twins Garden are produced there.

Set over two floors, the restaurant’s eco-minimalist style captures elements of the outdoors in the 70-cover dining room with naturally rough surfaces made from rock, walls that glisten as if they were wet and mossy cache-pots adorning the tables. The restaurant boasts both a chef’s table and a table for four in the chef’s ‘laboratory’ reserved for ardent foodies.

Signature dishes such as barley ‘kasha’ (a type of traditional slow milk-cooked porridge) salt-baked inside a whole celeriac and served with shaved marinated celeriac; the option of venison or langoustines smoked in birch bark at the table, designed to create a sense of nostalgia and familiarity by using indigenous ingredients and traditional recipes updated with innovative techniques.

Saveur magazine called Twins restaurant ‘wildly popular’ and described the brothers as ‘heart-throb-adorable and bursting with an earnest enthusiasm’, while The Guardian said that the Berezutskiys were ‘pioneers in the focus on Russian ingredients’. Conde Nast Traveller included Sergey in their list of 10 Young Chefs to Watch in 2016 and Twins was one of two Russian restaurants to be listed in the top 51-100 of the World’s 50 Best Restaurants List in 2017. Sergey’s dish of langoustine, artichoke and tomato won him the San Pellegrino Young Chef of the Year award in 2014.