RUSSIA
Food of the country—Restaurants in Moscow—The dining places of St. Petersburg—Odessa—Warsaw.
Russian Dishes
The Russians are a nation of gourmands, for the Zakouska, the potatoes and celery, spiced eels, stuffed crayfish, chillies stuffed with potato, olives, minced red cabbage, smoked goose-flesh, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon, raw herring, pickled mushrooms, radishes, caviar, and a score of other "appetisers," and the petits patés, the Rastegai (tiny pies of the lightest paste with a complicated fish stuffing and a little fresh caviar in the openings at the top), the Tartelettes St-Hubert, any other little pasties of fish and flesh eaten with the soup, could only be consumed by vigorous eaters. Soups are the contribution of Russia to the cuisine of the world, and the moujik, when he first stirred some sour cream into his cabbage broth, little thought that from his raw idea the majestic Bortch would come into existence. The two cold soups of which salt cucumber juice forms the foundation are curious. There are other admirable soups of Russian invention, one, Selianka, a fish soup made from the sterlet and sturgeon, being much liked when a taste for it has been acquired. The sturgeon of course comes into the menu of many Russian dinners, and also the sterlet, cooked in white wine and served with shrimp sauce. There is a fish pie of successive layers of rice, eggs, and fish, which is one of the native dishes and is much like Kedgeree. Boiled Moscow sucking pig, which in its short but happy life has tasted naught but cream, boiled and served with horse-radish sauce and sour cream is a dish for good angels, and roast mutton stuffed with buckwheat is not to be despised. Srazis are little rolled strips of mutton with forced meat inside, fried in butter. Moscow is especially celebrated for its cutlets of all kinds, chicken garnished with mushrooms and cream, and veal in especial. Nesselrode Pudding is frequently found on Russian menus. Some of the peasant soups, one for instance in which all the scraps of the kitchen are boiled with any grain and fruit which may be handy, are dreadful decoctions. Russia has its native wines, those of the Caucasus being very good imitations of French wine. There is a champagne of the Don which often finds its way into bottles with French labels on them. Polynnaïa, a wormwood whisky, is an excellent digestive.
I now let A.B. have his say.
Moscow
There are three principal restaurants in Moscow—the Bolskoi Moscovski, the Ermitage, and the Slaviansky Bazaar; of these the Ermitage and the Bolskoi are probably the best for dinner.
The Ermitage in Trubnaia Plastchad has a great reputation in Moscow for its cuisine, and is the favourite restaurant and resort of the upper class; it has an imposing general luncheon and dining-hall, also separate saloons for private dinner-parties. Most of the official banquets are held here.
The cost of a luncheon, with choice of any two dishes from a list of fifteen or twenty, is 1 rouble.
Dinners can be had for—