Mendeleev was one of Moscow’s first cocktails bars where cocktail-making was treated as an art and it was also one of the first “secret” bars, a concept borrowed from New York’s Chinatown. Look for the tiny Lucky Noodles noodle takeaway joint and then once inside, look for the strict face control guy standing in front of a drawn curtain. If it’s your lucky day and the gods of cocktails smile down upon you, you will be allowed into the dimly lit basement setting, reminiscent slightly of Frankenstein’s dungeon (but in a sexy and chic way, of course). Here you can observe the fascinating work of the local mixologists, who are superb specialists in absinthe and cocktails based on absinthe. The bar menu, which by the way will take a good 15 minutes to study in depth, is accompanied by light, tasty and quick to prepare Pan-Asian dishes from Roni, the restaurant next door. On weekdays indulge yourself in live piano and jazz performances, on weekends put on your dancing shoes for cool deep techno and deep house. Mendeleev is definitely somewhere on top of every Muscovites’ list of best cocktail places.