Aschermann Food in Russia

Food in Russia

Food in Russia. Well what can be said. First, we lived in a dormitory and had institutional cooking. American students easily find fault with dorm food because it is not cooked like mom cooks. Add to this a different culture.

What can be said is "Russians eat differently from most Americans." A breakfast of ham and eggs, Quaker Oats, or puffed wheat was not found in Moscow.

Breakfast the first day in Moscow was a startling experience: two American style weenies and a bowl of peas. Some people thought that the weenies were a Russian sausage. To me they were simply hot dogs without the mustard ad ketchup. Frequently for breakfast we had some type of cabbage entry as well as beets. Each breakfast had a salami plate and a cheese and bread plate.

"Lunch" is the main meal in Russia. Each meal starts with some type of soup or borsht. The soup was always good. "Salad" was cabbage or beets.

I don't recall if the 3rd photo below is breakfast or lunch-- we had fried salmon several times. "Good but very filling!" :)

The 6th photo below was lunch. The meat I believe was chicken. The starch of the day was barley cooked like rice. There must be a scarcity of potatoes in Russia--- had lots of rice but few potatoes.

Each dinner and supper had two kinds of bread--- I was disappointed in the bread. Not much to it. [The quality of bread is another of those simple things that I use to judge a culture. If they have good bread, then the rest of the meals will be good.] I had assumed and expected some great whole wheat, black or rye breads.

Moscow has a large number of street vendors that sell food. Good food and a wide variety.

At least from the apparent quantity of food, few people in Russia [Moscow] go hungry. The number of hungry people probably something similar to that in the US. If you have money you can buy food of many varieties. America has food kitchens for the poor so if the "best fed" country in the world has poor people who do not eat right, it is safe to assume that a country like Russia also will have hungry people.

Thanks to Quaker Oats instant cereal, I was able to survive in Russia. Thank goodness I took some good American food to Russia. [With all the walking that was done plus "gee, that is a really good plate of _____ but definitely a little bit fills you up quickly."] I did stay away from McDonalds.

The tea was always good.

Meals that we had away from the dorm were also good. Let's face it--- dorm food is dorm food where ever a person might be.

Probably the best way to sum up the experience of food in Russia: once someone said "I would walk a mile for a Camel cigarette." In my case I would have walked five miles for a good taco, green chili and chicken enchilada.

Click on the photos below to make each larger.

The salami, butter and cheese for breakfast gives a person the energy needed to move forward through the day.

The above photo is the corner of a room where I lived for three weeks. What is surprising about the photo? ... It shows a refrigerator in the dormitory room. I assume that all of the other dorm rooms also had a refrigerator. Before seeing a refrigerator in student housing, I thought only the elite and rich in Russia could afford a refrigerator. Maybe there are more consumer goods available in Russian that I thought there was.

Each floor of the dorm also had a "community" kitchen.

America fast food is available in at least Moscow: McDonalds, Burger King, Pepsi and Coke. Some of the better meals were those that could be bought from a street vendor. The photo immediately above shows a blintz being made. Delicious when filled with your choice of meats or fruits.

I wonder what would happen if I wanted to take buy one of the eggs on the bottom. Some type of fish egg can be seen in the 2nd photo. [I pass.]

In Russia I visited four food stores in Moscow, two in St. Petersburg and one in a rural community. Each store seemed to be well stocked with a variety of foods [other than good things to prepare an enchilada.] The photos above show food that is available to all people [as long as they have the money.]

International trade: several times I bought a banana. Each one had a little sticker on it "Product of Ecuador." I assumed that a banana in Russia would come from Africa or Southeast Asia. I bought several cans of fruit... disappointed. The contents of the can was mainly water or juice with a little fruit.

Most towns of any size will have a restaurant. If I could read Russian I might be able to say that there are many restaurants available to local people and tourists. I did not see very many signs that said "come in an eat with us."

Above is a Georgian waitress trying to explain to an American what a particular dish would be.

I commented upon how I assumed that maybe today there would be more restaurants than before 1989 or so. In return the person said that there were always restaurants that were open an had food [that came out of the back door of a state run warehouse.]

I would have walked five miles [maybe even more] for a good enchilada and some Mexican rice.

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Note: the series of webpages that present Russia in the spring of 2004 are not copyrighted.

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