Gourmet guide: 7 cities in Russia, where you should go on a gastro tour
Miscellaneous / / May 31, 2022
Be careful, it's dangerous to read on an empty stomach.
1. Kazan
It will take more than one week to try all the Tatar traditional dishes. So for a gastro trip to Kazan, plan a long vacation. And get ready to eat a lot of meat and dough.
What to try
- Echpochmak. You won't have to look for this triangular meat pie in Kazan for a long time: it is on the menu of both budget canteens and expensive restaurants. Echpochmak is so legendary that a monument was erected to him in the center of the city.
- Beshbarmak. Meat, noodles, onions and rich broth are the main ingredients of this dish. By tradition, you need to eat it with your hands, but if you are not ready for such experiments, you can use a fork.
- Kyzdyrma. Meaty roast that is eaten cold. Beef, lamb, horse meat or goose can be used as the basis for the dish.
- Kystyby. A thin unleavened flatbread stuffed with mashed potatoes or porridge. Kystyby is cooked in a frying pan without oil and is usually served with tea.
- Chak-chak. Another dish for tea, but this time sweet. Chak-chak is a deep-fried dough, in the form of sticks or balls, abundantly poured with honey syrup. If the dessert is fresh, it is soft and literally melts in your mouth.
2. Irkutsk
Irkutsk is familiar to tourists as a transit stop on the way to Baikal. But even if the main purpose of the trip is to see natural attractions, it is worth staying in the city though for a couple of days to try the dishes of the national cuisines of the peoples living in the Eastern Siberia.
What to try
- Tsuivan. Fried noodles with meat and vegetables. The "pasta" for this dish is made from a tortilla that is first steamed and then cut into thin strips.
- Buuzy, they are poses. Relatives of dumplings, manti and khinkali. According to one legend, the unusual shape of this dish was inspired by the yurt - it is round and has a smoke hole on top. Bouzes are steamed, and you need to eat them with your hands, but first bite from the bottom to drink the fragrant broth.
- Sagudai. Cold appetizer of fresh raw fish. It is marinated in vinegar with oil, onions and spices.
- Salamat. Fatty and very unusual soup. To prepare it, sour cream is boiled over low heat, gradually adding flour. In the process, the base is separated into butter and flour lumps. You need to eat salamat with bread.
- Buhler. Another hearty soup, but this time with lamb. Sometimes only onions and green onions are added to the rich meat broth, and sometimes potatoes, tomatoes and carrots are also added.
3. Kaliningrad
The history of Kaliningrad was reflected not only in its architecture. It is still easy to find many traditional German dishes on the menu of the city's restaurants. But you should not limit yourself to them during the gastro tour - due to the proximity to the Baltic Sea, the city has a lot of fresh fish and unusual recipes from it.
What to try
- Königsberg bugs. Boiled meatballs in a creamy sauce with capers. The classic side dish for bedbugs is potatoes, boiled or mashed, and beetroot salad.
- Stroganina from bonito. Thinly sliced fresh frozen fish served with pickled onions, croutons, lemon wedge and sauce. This dish is one of the most popular in Kaliningrad, it can be found in almost every restaurant.
- Marzipan. He is in the city, too, at every step. Glazed, baked, with orange peel, with pieces of nuts - it seems impossible to try all kinds of this sweet in one visit. But you can try!
- Venison. Steak, goulash, jerky, stroganina, tartare. There is a large reindeer farm in the Kaliningrad region, so the meat of these animals is easy to find on the menu.
- Königsberg Fleck. Traditional beef tripe soup (part of the stomach). The broth turns out to be fatty and rich - it helps to warm up in autumn and winter. In addition to meat, the composition includes pickled cucumbers, potatoes, carrots and fresh herbs.
4. Petrozavodsk
There are practically no meat dishes in Karelian cuisine. But often there are fish, mushrooms and wild berries, including cloudberries and blueberries. Another interesting feature is that the dough for flour products here is usually made not from wheat, but from rye or barley flour.
What to try
- Gates. Open pies from rye dough. The filling of the gates can be either salty, for example, from mashed potatoes, or sweet, from cottage cheese, blueberries, lingonberries and other berries.
- Calaqueitto. Ear on milk or cream. For such a soup, fish with white fillet is used, such as ruff, whitefish or cod. And if salmon is added instead, the dish will be called lohikeitto. Another type of Karelian fish soup is kalaruoka: in it, the broth is passed through birch coals at the end of cooking. This allows you to remove the bitterness and make the taste of the soup more tender and pleasant.
- Vendace. This fish looks like a small herring, but in fact it is a relative of the whitefish. In Petrozavodsk bars and restaurants, it is served fried to a golden brown, and lingonberry sauce, lemon slices, pickled onions or other additives are placed on a plate.
- Berries. Lingonberries, cranberries, cloudberries, blueberries, blueberries and all of them - fruit drinks, jams, desserts.
- Losyatin. Roasts, stews, meatballs, cutlets and other dishes are prepared from this meat in local establishments.
5. Vladivostok
The cuisine of Vladivostok was influenced by the proximity to the sea, Japan and Korea. Therefore, it will delight fans of Asian cuisines and seafood. In addition to walking around the establishments, you should definitely look into the supermarkets here: there are unusual snacks, sweets and drinks on the shelves.
What to try
- Seafood. Fresh crabs, scallops, oysters, shrimps, squids, mussels. Vladivostok is a great place to eat them to satiety.
- Chinese cuisine. The locals call restaurants with it “chifanki”. In addition to the already familiar wok, you can find more unexpected dishes on the menu, such as an omelet with tofu or eggs in caramel.
- Pian-se. This Korean steam patty is the star of the local street food. The classic pian-se with meat, cabbage and onions has a specific flavor that some love and some hate.
- Scablyanka from cucumaria. Meat stew with an unusual ingredient - sea mollusk.
- Bracken fern. Fried, marinated, boiled. Fern in Vladivostok is eaten as a side dish, used as a snack, added to salads, pies and roasts.
6. Makhachkala
If Vladivostok is an ideal destination for seafood lovers, Makhachkala will be appreciated by meat fans. And sweeties! There are many unusual desserts here. Tea connoisseurs will also like it: the abundance of fragrant mountain herbs makes it possible to diversify the classic varieties of black and green in Dagestan. By the way, in Makhachkala there are establishments entirely dedicated to this drink.
What to try
- Khinkal. This dish, although similar in composition, is very different from Georgian khinkali. Here the pieces of dough and the meat are separated from each other, but boiled together in the broth. Then they are taken out and served with sauce, fresh herbs and broth poured into a separate plate.
- Apricot porridge. Despite the name, there are no grains in it at all. According to the recipe, a mixture of water and flour is introduced into boiling apricot juice. Serve porridge with linen urbech or nuts.
- Bakhukh. Flour halva, which is made from flour, sugar and butter. This dessert is usually served on holidays. Finding it in a cafe can be problematic, it is better to look in local pastry shops.
- Botlikh pie. Yeast-free pastry stuffed with dried apricots and walnuts.
- Miracle. Thin flatbread fried in a dry frying pan. Chopped meat, offal, browned pumpkin, greens with eggs, cheese or cottage cheese are used as a filling in a miracle. Linen urbech is considered the best sauce for this pastry, regardless of the filling, in Dagestan.
7. Rostov-on-Don
Rostov-on-Don is a merchant city: back in the 18th century, a large river port appeared here, which was visited by merchants from different countries. As a result, many diasporas formed here. This has also shaped the local cuisine: in addition to traditional South Russian dishes, it is easy to find dishes of Armenian, Georgian and Dagestan cuisines here.
What to try
- Crayfish. This is a visiting card of Rostov-on-Don. The classic recipe for crayfish is boiled with dill and bay leaf. But try others: with green curry, porcini mushrooms, adjika, apples or fried - you can’t list all the options.
- Carp. This fish in Rostov is stuffed with stewed cabbage and caviar, and then baked. Sometimes the filling is eaten as an independent dish or added to pies.
- Cossack soup. Lamb broth with potatoes, millet and garlic. This soup is served with sour cream and grated egg.
- Nardek. It's watermelon honey. To prepare it, the pulp of a ripe watermelon is rubbed until smooth, put on fire and boiled. It turns out viscous sweet jam.
- Donskaya okroshka. One important detail distinguishes it from the traditional recipe: instead of meat or sausage, dried fish is added to the salad. And you need to fill the Don okroshka with rye kvass.
While on vacation in the Rostov region, one cannot fail to try fresh local fruits, including plums, pears, zherdёly (wild apricots) and, most importantly, grapes. The region is considered the capital of Russian autochthonous grapes - this is the name of the varieties that appeared in a natural way and retain their taste characteristics only if they grow on a certain territory. From their berries do raisins, marmalade and indigenous wines are a new trend in Russian winemaking.