Moscow Restaurant
Moscow Restaurant (Chinese: 莫斯科餐厅; pinyin: Mòsīkē Cāntīng) is a Russian restaurant in Beijing’s Xicheng District. It opened on October 2, 1954, as part of the Soviet Exhibition Center to foster friendship between China and the Soviet Union. One of Beijing’s first Western-style restaurants, it is affectionately called “Old Moscow” (Lǎo Mò).
The building, designed by Soviet architects, was meant to showcase Soviet life and culture. At first, it served Soviet visitors and well-connected Chinese, with high prices that made dining there a special occasion. It became a symbol of modernity and status; a young man even saved three months to take his girlfriend there and proposed during a performance of Moscow Nights.
During the 1960s Sino-Soviet split, the restaurant was renamed the Beijing Exhibition Restaurant and Soviet food imports were cut. In the Cultural Revolution, Red Guards accused the kitchen of cooking “revisionist food”; the place closed for a year and reopened as a Chinese cafeteria. Western food returned in 1969, and it remained the city’s only publicly open Western restaurant.
On November 7, 1984, the restaurant reclaimed its original name, Moscow Restaurant, and it grew popular for weddings and general visits. The venue covers about 1,300 square metres and can seat 600 people. It was renovated in 2000 and again in 2009 to restore its original look.
Today, Moscow Restaurant serves classic Russian dishes like borscht, beef solyanka, cream of mushroom soup, chicken Kiev, and kvass, along with Western fine-dining options. It remains a nostalgic symbol of the early China–Soviet relationship and a historic part of the Beijing Exhibition Center.
This page was last edited on 3 February 2026, at 02:09 (CET).