Besides caviar, what did you eat in Russia?

I'm glad you asked!
As a non Russian I'd describe the food as comfort food. Hmmm, shouldn't all food give some comfort? But you know what  I mean. Hearty, warming food that sticks to your ribs - soups, bread, dumplings, pancakes, porridge, stews and casseroles, potatoes. My uninformed theory is the love of filling food stems from the days when there wasn't much to go around.


There are always several soups on the menu, including Borscht, and often Okroshka. Our daughter in law (who is Russian) says she can't go two days without soup and she loves Okroshka.  This is a soup of thinly sliced vegetables and boiled meat and it's made with Kvas,  a fermented bread drink.  I know, it's sounding better and better!  That it is fermented probably means it will be trending on western menus before long.  It's an acquired taste.

Our dumpling guy


Dumplings come in all sizes and are often eaten for snacks as well as part of a meal. Cabbage is a popular filling. Mmmm I hear you say.  We found a great hole in the wall coffee place near our Moscow hotel where we conversed with the guy using a translation app. His coffee was excellent as were his Korean dumplings. Go to Russia and eat kimchi and pork dumplings for breakfast. Why not? Delicious.

The son and d-i-l had recommended a beer and sausage place near the Bolshoi, so we went before the ballet. It's all culture right? Spicy sausages grilled over a huge pile of charcoal, stuffed into bread with onions and mustard. You'd think we were at a baseball game. We wiped our fingers before going into the theatre. 

The hunter-gatherer tracking down a spicy sausage

Stews and similar dishes come thickened and always (in our experience) with potatoes. Pork, beef and lamb are all popular. Salads run from Greek to Caesar, along with local compositions such as the delicious Georgian salad with walnut dressing we ate one night.

Georgian salad with walnut dressing

Nuts turn up a lot, particularly walnuts. They coated the delicious delicate fried smelt, acted as binding for the various starter spreads, and popped up in salads. 

Fish is popular, particularly fresh water species including, God be praised, salmon. Delicious salmon tartare, fillets, baked, smoked....yum.  Russians' love of fish means sushi restaurants are very popular, which came as a surprise.  Sushi and Russian don't go together in my head.  Smoked fish, yes, and markets are full of it. And we ate little fish, smelt, quickly fried and very tasty. Like a larger, stronger flavoured version of New Zealand whitebait. 

walnut crumbed smelt with gazpacho sauce

Bakeries have great bread and delicious pies and pastries. Sour cream and cream cheese desserts feature heavily and taste damned good with luscious fresh berries.

 

As in all European cities there are restaurants of every stripe. Italian, Chinese, Indian and so on. We didn't come away totally wowed by anything, but nothing was really inedible or terrible either. Possibly because I ignored the 'bovine brains' when I encountered them on a menu.  Presentation varied hugely and there are attractive and unattractive ways to serve any dish. We saw some unattractive ones, some over complicated styling, some no frills slapitonaplate ones that still tasted good. 

I love good food!

Who knew eggs were so expensive?

St Petersburg survival kit: when you leave the house wear waterproof shoes, take an umbrella, raincoat and sunglasses.  Still waiting to use the sunglasses. This is a Russian summer.

Suitably dressed in rain attire we start the day with a walk up to visit the Fabergé museum located In the fabulous (they are ALL fabulous) Shuvalovsky Palace. It's difficult to imagine all these palaces were someone's home in the 1800s. They are immense, richly decorated (when restored) indulgences.  No wonder the peasants revolted! 

Anyway, the tsars. In 1885 Alexander III commissioned jeweller Peter Carl Fabergé to create an Easter gift for his wife.  In Russian Orthodox tradition Easter is like Christmas for Christians, and gifts are given.  From 1897 the new tsar (there were a lot of them!) Nicholas II asked Fabergé to continue making the eggs every Easter for his mother and his wife.

And the eggs are exquisite works of art and engineering. All have a 'surprise' inside - presumably Kinder stole the idea.  The carriage inside one of the eggs is an exact replica of the Coronation carriage. The wheels roll, the glass in the windows is bevelled, the steps fold down, and inside another surprise: a diamond suspended from the ceiling. It took 15 months of 16 hour days to make the carriage alone.

This is not a stage coach! It's an Imperial Coronation carriage in miniature

Of the 50 eggs made and delivered to the Imperial family between 1885 and 1916 (come the Revolution!) 43 have survived, many in private collections. Current valuations vary according to how complete the eggs are; many surprises are missing, eggs vary in workmanship, detail and amount of precious metal and stones, but millions would be a starting point. In 2014 one sold for 20 million pounds. And you thought free range eggs were expensive!

The palace also has a large collection of cloisonné work and Imperial factory porcelain. The sort of thing you could never imagine actually using. 

From here we went on to an impromptu lunch featuring eggs of a different kind.

If you are in St Petersburg (on a cold, drizzly Summer's day) why wouldn't you spend $150 a head on a caviar tasting at a fancy pants restaurant called Tsar? Ten grams each of Sevruga, Sturgeon and Beluga with an ice cold shot of vodka. My kind of lunch.

Three kind of caviar, the lightest blini in the world, and ice cold vodka.

And if I didn't know the restaurant wasn't average before going to the bathroom, I knew when I got there. You might want to check out the wallpaper - if you've got a strong constitution. 

This is the throne room

Here's more lovely eggs to take your mind off that.

Lilies of the Valley, Empress Alexandra Fyodorovna favourite flower, the surprise is the portraits of the tsar Nicholas II and their daughters Tatiana and Olga

A jade bay tree. A hidden lever opens the top and a feathered so bird rises up, flaps its wins, turns its head - AND IT SINGS! Call Russia's got Talent.

With a pop up rooster and working clock