Originally Posted by CyberSEO

"Экспедиция" (the Expedition) is a very specific restaurant chain. It's stylized for scientists' life in the far north taiga. So the dishes there are very specific too. Many sorts of cold vodka on herbal roots, taiga berries, and cedar cones. Wild mushrooms. Meat of wild animals which is usually... raw. Etc... So it's a very-very specific place, I'd say

Anyways, till you have a Russian visa, you just have to visit Saint Petersburg and Moscow. Hopefully the weather in Moscow is very warm these days (my thermometer shows +35C on sunshine at 11 AM).

P.S. As about Nizhny Novgorod, so it's still a province...