CHAPTER XIV

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.