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--
1 rouble 25 kopeks (6 courses) or
2 roubles 25 " (8 courses)
The restaurants are generally open till about 2 A.M.
The numerous waiters are dressed in white on week days, on Sundays and
feast days in coloured silk Tartar dresses. A large orchestrion plays
from time to time during meals.
This restaurant has three head _chefs_ and thirty-eight _chefs_, besides
_pâtissiers_ and all the smaller fry of the kitchen. The store-rooms for
game, etc., form one of the sights of Moscow, and should be seen. There
is a service of Sèvres china, which is very beautiful, and on which
dinners are served on very special occasions. An extra charge, and a
high one, is made for the use of this.
The Ermitage is unlike any other restaurant in the world in many
respects. There is an admirable cellar of wines, and it is not a place
for a man to give a big dinner at unless he is prepared to encounter a
very big bill.
In Russia there is, as you will see by the subjoined menu of a typical
Ermitage dinner, a sort of intermediate course between the soup and the
fish called _petits pâtés_, which rather takes the place of an entrée,
and although counted as nothing when it is preceded by the _Sakouska_
(_i.e._ a preliminary "stand up" snack which waylays you at a separate
buffet as you walk into dinner and consists of all sorts of
_appétissants_ such as caviar, cunningly smoked fish, olives, etc., with
Kümmel and other liqueurs as an accompaniment) the smallest dinner
resolves itself into a formidable repast that perhaps only a Russian
would be capable of doing full justice to.
ERMITAGE RESTAURANT.
MENU.
Consommé Bariatinsky.
Petits Pâtés.
Timbale Napolitaine.
Vol-au-vent Rossini.
Friands à la Reine.
Tartelettes St-Hubert.
Esturgeon en Vin de Champagne.
Selle de Mouton d'Ecosse Nesselrode. Punch
Imperial.
Bécasses.
Cailles.
Salade et Concombres Salés.
Chouxfleurs. Sauce Polonaise.
Bombe en Surprise.
Dessert.
The Bolskoi Moscovski is opposite the town hall and has a spacious and
fine central dining-hall. Here also the waiters are dressed in white,
and an orchestrion discourses music during meal times. Its prices are
practically the same as at the Ermitage.
Testoff's is another good restaurant where purely Russian dishes are
served; it is therefore interesting and worth a visit, and gives a very
good insight as to the national cuisine.
These restaurants are much frequented at lunch time, especially in
summer, when families are out in Datchas or villas in the environs of
Moscow, and the men have to lunch in town. In winter they are full until
late in the evening.
One of the best lunch-places in Moscow is the Slaviansky Bazaar in
Nikolski Street, Kitaigorod, situated in the city or business centre of
Moscow. It is a mid-day resort of the business men and travellers
staying at the hotel, but is more or less deserted afterwards. It has a
spacious and lofty restaurant hall and takes in the _Times_ and English
illustrated papers. It was formerly noted for its regular English table
for members of the colony, who, however, subsequently deserted it to
some extent for the three main restaurants.
Here luncheons can be had with excellent choice _à la carte_. Dinners
cost from 1 rouble 25 kopeks.
In addition to these regular restaurants there are several summer garden
resorts of a gayer character with cafés, theatres, open-air stages, and
various café-chantant amusements. These resorts are at their gayest in
the early hours of the morning, till 4 A.M., when the company becomes
somewhat varied, and as the guide-books sagely remark, "Gentlemen had
better leave their ladies at the hotel."
These places are prettily laid out, and in the afternoon and early part
of the evening serve to pass a pleasant hour or two in the summer. Dress
clothes are not generally worn when visiting them.
In the town the two best ones are the Aquarium and the Ermitage Sad (Sad
is Russian for garden), not the same as the Ermitage Restaurant above
mentioned. Admission to gardens, 50 kopeks.
The Yar and the Strelna are favourite restaurant late-evening resorts
near the Petrovski Park, a short drive out. The Yar is open in the
summer and winter, but the Strelna in the winter only.
St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg has nominally three first-class restaurants, viz., the
Bear (L'Ours) on the Bolschaya Kononschaya; the Restaurant de Paris,
known as Cubat's, on the Bolschaya Marskaya; and Donon's on the Moika
Canal. All of them are good. Donon's has an excellent cellar and
supplies a good dinner if ordered in advance. The price of the set meals
is very reasonable, about 2 roubles or 4s. 4d. per head; but the profits
are made on the wines, which are ridiculously expensive (owing to the
enormous duties). For instance, a bottle of _vin ordinaire_ costs 4
roubles 50 kopeks, or 9s. 8d., and no bottle of dry champagne can be had
for less than 10 roubles or 21s. 8d.; a whisky and soda is charged 1
rouble 50 kopeks, and in some places 2 roubles; a half bottle of wine is
always charged 50 kopeks more than the actual half bottle price.
The Hôtel de France has a luncheon at 75 kopeks, or 1s. 6d., which is
very popular with the business community of St. Petersburg, and it is
crowded from 12.30 to 2 o'clock. The food is not high class but of a
good bourgeois description, and the place is kept by a Belgian named
Renault. It is one of the best hotels in St. Petersburg, and its
situation is suited to the purpose; but, as a matter of fact, there is
absolutely no first-class hotel either in St. Petersburg or Moscow, and
sanitation is a factor that has not yet penetrated into the Russian
intellect. A man who eats oysters in Russia, eats his own damnation, and
at a high price in both senses; they are both costly and poisonous in a
town where typhoid is easily contracted.
In the summer there are two good restaurants on the islands, a few miles
from St. Petersburg, a sort of Richmond to St. Petersburg,--Felicien's,
a dependence of Cubat's; and Ernest's, a branch of the Café de l'Ours,
and managed by a brother of the proprietor. Both these have an excellent
cuisine and cellar, but the charges, especially at Felicien's, are
fairly extravagant. Bands of music and pretty gardens are features of
these restaurants, and Felicien's has a terrace on the river opposite
the Emperor's summer palace on the Island of Iliargin. They are both
practically closed during the winter, excepting by arrangement or when
sleighing parties make a rendezvous there.
There is also a German restaurant, Lemner's, at No. 18 Newsky Prospect,
where a good, cheap German repast can be procured for 1 rouble and drink
therewith, Russian pilsener or Munich beer.
Odessa
At the great port on the Black Sea the restaurant of the Hôtel de
Londres Yastchouk is one of the best in Russia. Yastchouk was the name
of its late proprietor, who died in 1902, and was a real lover of good
cookery, enjoying nothing more than to serve an exquisite meal to a real
connoisseur. When any gourmet came to his restaurant, he would ask him
whether he came from the north or the south. If from the north, he would
suggest a real southern meal, with _Rougets à la Grec_ and the delicious
_Agneau de lait_, unobtainable in St. Petersburg, and a ragout of
_aubergines_ and tomatoes. If from the south, he would recommend a good
_Bortch_ with _petits pâtés_, or a slice of _Koulebiaka_, a great
pot-pie full of all kinds of good things, or some milk-white sucking-pig
covered with cream and horse-radish. Yastchouk has joined the majority,
but his restaurant is carried on in the same spirit as when he was
alive.
Warsaw
Brühl's used to be the one good restaurant in the capital of Poland, but
the restaurant of the Bristol, new, clean, smart, and cheap, with a
French _maître-d'hôtel_ in command, is commended and recommended. When
the Bristol restaurant at night has all its electric lights in full glow
it looks like the magic cave into which Aladdin penetrated.