The cuisine of every country has some unique national products and dishes that may be called “calling cards” and are known all over the world. So Russian “calling cards” can be red caviar, cottage cheese (curds), buckwheat, semolina, rye flour in products and borscht, vareniki, pirozhki, sour cabbage, pickled cucumbers, rye bread, kvas, kisel etc. in dishes.

The real king of the Russian cuisine is borscht (red beetroot soup). The traditions of Slavic cuisines have mixed much, and originally Ukrainian dish became a real Russian one. There is a million of recipes of borscht. Some cooks prefer thick one, they say, that real borscht should be so thick that a spoon can stand in it. Others prefer a more thin dish like soup. Never the less, the special set of products is the main think in this dish. Beetroon gives it distinctive red color, potatoes gives thickness, garlic gives remarkable flavor. A bowl of steaming borscht, a plate of fresh bread, sour-cream are reall Russian meal.

It’s hard to imagine the Russian cuisine without potato. This vegetable appeared in Russian only in the XVIII century, but it gained much popularity quickly. Russians boil potato and serve it with fried fish or pickled herring, fry it with mushrooms or just add it to cabbage with meat or with fish. Potato is used to stuff cakes and vareniki (dumplings).

Vareniki is another popular Russian dish. It is boiled pieces of paste stuffed with something. The filling may be sweat curds, potato, cabbage, mushrooms, berries with sugar – strawberry, currants, raspberry.

There exists another Russian dish similar to vareniki and called “pelmeni”. It is little pieces of paste stuffed with meat. The best filling is made of the equal amounts of beef and pork meat with onion, minced and sprinkled with pepper. Pelmeni have distinctive shape that reminds little ear. They are boiled and served in a bowl with broth, butter, sour-cream and parsley.

Cakes and pancakes play very important role in the Russian cuisine. The filing of cakes is various. It may be meat and onion or rice with meat, cabbage and carrots, potato, boiled eggs with green onion, apples and even sorrel with sugar. Pancakes are ancient Russian dish. A pancake resembles the sun because of its round shape and gold, brown or yellow colour. Russians baked them at the end of winter in order to ask the Sun to hurry up spring. The coming of spring was always a great holiday called “Maslenitsa”.

The most popular Russian drink is black tea. In old times Russians brewed tea in a special kind of kettle – “samovar” that is the symbol of Russian tea-parties till now. Another particular Russian drink is a kind of jelly called “kisel”. It is cooked from water, fresh berries of jam with sugar and starch. This dish is particularly tasty with fresh buns or just with white bread.

Now in Russian cities you can find restaurants that offer Armenian, Chinese, Japanese, Italian dishes, buffet-restaurants or fast-food cafes like McDonalds’, but Russian cuisine restaurants attract most tourists. The best places to try Russian dish in Vladivostok are the restaurants “Nostalgia” and “Zamok Okhotnika” (the Hunter’s Castle), or just a visit to a Russian family.