The Food

it's been really really good.  I don't know that we've been eating a lot of traditional Russian fare - -it's mostly standard European style really good food.  If anyone is still thinking of the old days of food lines, and lack of variety -- well, don't.  The grocery stores are stuffed to the gills (do grocery stores have gills?) with all kinds of food -- from all over the world.   The surprising thing for me was the amount of seafood -- tons of salmon, octopus, seaweed.....etc.
Not surprising is the focus on beets -- in addition to borscht, there is always raw beet salad everywhere.
The soups are fantastic -- I guess in this climate, you have to be able to make good soups.  And please, please, please believe me when I say that borscht is delicious - it does not taste like beet juice.  Its base is a rich beef broth, which is just made a little sweeter by the beets (and is given a cool color by it) -- a touch of cool and creamy and tangy sour cream, dark bread -- yum yum yum.
Breads are really good -- more dark bread options than I am used to, but all good.
Coffee is excellent -- again, old school European style coffee -- strong, delicious, with lots of different varieties and lots of different coffeedrinks which are just a smidgen different from what we are used to in the US.
Surprising to me - is that alcohol is served everywhere -- we went to this food court like cafeteria -- and there was a full bar -- and people were doing shots for lunch.  And, on menus, beer is listed with non-alcoholic drinks
There seems to be a  lot more mushrooms in everything, and mushroom based dishes than in the US.
And, the desserts are fantastic.  I haven't seen anything that I would classify as "Russian" desserts, but restaurants and coffeeshops and bakeries all have display cases full of elaborate European style tarts, cakes, pastries.  And they are all delicious.
There is a surprising amount of sushi places -- on our street - 2-3.  Lots of ethnic foods -- Chinese, Italian, Japanese, Indian (no Mexican that I could tell) .... I would really like to try Central Asian food -- apparently Georgian and Uzbek cuisine is really tasty, I guess we just haven't come across it yet.
And caviar -- salmon roe is plentiful and inexpensive.  Most fancy grocery stores also carry black caviar -- the prices are shocking, even for Moscow.  Tiny little tins for hundreds of dollars.
Also a lot of crepes -- they are a little thicker, spongier and less sweet than what I associate with crepes - -and from what I could tell, mostly filled with savory stuff.






 



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