LILA
In January 2021, The Insider Bar opened its doors on the second floor of the LILA project on Sretenka street, a trendy neighborhood in central Moscow. LILA is a 1200 square meter space spread over three floors which includes LILA Pastry confectionery and Pan-Asian restaurant LILA Asia on the ground floor, and LILA Restaurant and Insider bar on the upper floor. There is also a pop-up rooftop terrace used during the summer. The name of the project is inspired by the philosophical board game Leela with origins in ancient India 5000 years ago. The original game was created by Hindu scholars with the intention of providing insight into the human consciousness. The objective of finding and understanding one's own self by liberation from illusions is reflected in the LILA project. Insider’s bar team includes beverage director Vladimir Mayakov, chief bartender Andrey Bolshakov and bartenders Nikita Ivankin, Alexey Proshkin, Aldar Ochirov, Alexander Shtifanov, Ella Trofimenkova and Ilya Velikanov.
Beverage director Vladimir Mayakov and chief bartender Andrey Bolshakov
Other than inspiring self-exploration, owners Galaktion and Elina Tabidze’s aim with Insider bar is to improve the bar culture in Russia’s capital by educating both locals and international guests about mixology. In coming up with the concept for Insider bar, the jetset couple were motivated by their international travels, and the top bars they discovered in London, Paris, New York and Milano. Insider bar features massive windows which overlook the street, which gives the guests the feeling of an expansive space, further adding to the relaxing atmosphere at Insider. Just in front of the windows is a state of the art laboratory, which is separated from the main bar by floor to ceiling glass panels.
Insider. Photo by Sergey Krasyuk.
The interior of Insider is reminiscent of a modern island, a laboratory surrounded by the walls of rammed earth – the effect is visually stunning and reveals one of the core philosophies of Insider: a profound respect for resources and the value and integrity of the materials used. The tectonics of the ceiling imitates the plot of the Earth. Meanwhile, its forms and lines are modern, set strategically with correctly placed accents. The centipede tables almost seems to be living with a mysterious energy. While sipping a cocktail at Insider you could even image that you are in a future Mars colony, in part thanks to the red-sand color of the walls.
The bar counter at Insider is unique in the world, with a hexagonal design that puts the guests right next to the bartender, to make them feel like they are part of the drink creation process. The innovative bar counter was designed by Behind Bars Agency of Oslo, already well known for its bar station produced for Tayer+Elementary with hexagon shape inserts. The central bar counter at Insider also features bar stations with hexagons, which have the advantage of holding the maximum number of bottles and tools. You can also turn each hexagon into a pocket for preparations, ice or tools, or a place for making cocktails. The stations can be configured to the bartender’s personal preferences, and work equally well for right and left-handed people.
Cleverly designed bar stations at Insider. Photo by Sergey Krasyuk.
Insider’s bar counter features three bartending stations, with up to two guests adjacent to each station. At the center of the bar counter is a space for an art installation, which currently features a winter field from the Eastern part of Russia. Flanking the central hexagon are two longer 12-seat tables suitable for larger groups or simply where guests can easily mingle with each other while consuming the avant-garde cocktails at Insider.
One of the most innovative features of the bar stations are that all the signatures are prediluted and prebatched in glass bottles stored in a bath held at a fixed temperatures by a Huber thermostat from Germany. This precise thermostat allows the bartender to tune the temperature of the water bath with steps of 0.05 degrees Celsius. This way, cocktails can be prepared and served in less than a minute.
Another key part of Insider bar is the world's first cocktail menu developed in collaboration with Baccarat. There are four cocktails inspired by the classic Negroni recipe and the cocktails are prepared on a beautiful steel trolley designed by Behind Bars, with clever compartments for the four iconic Baccarat glasses as well as the various ice forms and garnishes. Each drink reflects one of the four elements: Earth, Water, Air, and Fire, which are all essential to create Baccarat crystal. The trolley allows the bartender to prepare and serve the negronis right in front of a guest, at any place in the bar.
Baccarat Negroni trolley. Photo by Alexey Proshkin.
Other than the Negroni menu, the cocktail menu at Insider features 3 twists on classics, 3 no alcohol options and 11 signatures. One of the most popular signatures is Japanese Dry, a twist on the Dry Martini cocktail. The recipe was developed by head bartender Andrey Bolshakov who was came up with the idea thanks to one month internship at Tokyo bar Platform 9. Japanese Dry contains four Japanese elements: Roku gin, matcha tea, sake vermouth and black rice. As Roku gin has 14 botanicals and 2 of them are tea (Sencha and Gyokuro), Bolshakov decided to include matcha tea, distilled in a vacuum. Although sake vermouth is not available in Russia, Bolshakov took advantage of the two rotovaps at Insider to first distill premium sake to yield 250 ml distillate made of the light aromas and 250 ml of residue, with all the sugars, acids and other minerals that do not evaporate easily. In the second rotovap he performed a similar procedure with Carpano dry vermouth. By combining 250 ml of dry vermouth distillate with 250 ml of sake residue, Bolshakov developed his own sake vermouth. The final step was to fry black rice and distil it with water to make a hydrosol. This hydrosol was then use to dilute the mix of matcha gin and sake vermouth to 41% to complete the cocktail, which was then stored at -4˚C using the thermostat at Insider. The final cocktail is served in an elegant Kimura glass and garnished with a pickled Sakura flower.
Japanese Dry
The in-house laboratory is another talking point at Insider, which allows the bartenders to develop unique flavors using modern lab equipment such as a centrifuge, ultrasonic homogenizer, rotovap, and carbonation setup. In the near future, Insider plans to open a bartending school so that bartenders from around the world can access their state-of-the-art equipment and gain the necessary skills for using these modern techniques.
Insider bar is something of a dream for the cocktail enthusiast. With its beautiful décor, a world-caliber bar team, an innovative laboratory, a stunning bar station, and a trolley that puts all others to shame, it should be no surprise that Insider was recently voted GQ Russia’s best bar in Moscow and 13th place and the London Essence Best New Opening in the World’s 50 Best Bars.
The world class laboratory at Insider. Photo by Sergey Krasyuk.
Elina and Galaktion Tabidze