Barred windows and ceiling, lamps designed as police flashlights, barbed wire and excerpts from the Russian Penal Code are significant parts of the interior design at VIP Zone, Magnitogorsk. You can have a seat on a plank-bed (there are comfortable chairs for the more delicate) and eat your food with an aluminum fork. When you have finished, waitresses dressed in striped prison wrappers will bring you a bill dotted with fingerprints.

"I wanted to open a restaurant that would be something absolutely new, like nothing before it," Malkin told Komsomolskaya Pravda daily.