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American cuisine is becoming more and more popular in Moscow, with burgers, cupcakes and New York-style pizza taking over the cosmopolitan restaurant scene. A good example of this Americanisation is Corner Burger on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya or CBBG, as it's known among the hip crowd. It's one of many venues that provide an "authentic" New York culinary experience – steaks, salads and, of course, burgers of all sorts, at $15-25 a piece. It is popular among the upper middle class and the expat crowd – a slice of New York in the middle of Moscow.

Two miles away, in Chistye Prudy park, a different New York-themed oasis has recently been set up: Moscow's own Occupy Wall Street (OWS), named Occupy Abay after the famous Kazakh poet Abay, whose statue has become the...