Egg rolls, empanadas, chili dogs? Da!

Ice cream? Da! Da! Da!

Olympians and onlookers – particularly those who grew up this side of the Iron Curtain – are witnessing culinary perestroika at the midpoint of the 2014 winter games. In the Olympic Village, 6,000 participants from 90 countries are being fed by 7,000 food-service personnel. Because Latvian athletes eat differently than those from Togo, dietary choices must be available 24/7.

Despite detente, Russia still isn’t a top destination for Americans. But those who arrive in Sochi will look for local favorites in a city more like South Beach than Siberia. Heaven knows what they will find, since Russian food is all over the map in a country twice the size of the U.S., with about half the population.

Unifying ingredients: cabbage, beef, root vegetables, cheese, dark bread, rich sweets and … vodka.

Not all combinations appeal to the Western palate. For example, I spoke to Ilana Stewart, a Ukrainian-born semi-retired flight attendant, who because of her language skills still flies the New York-Moscow route twice a month. Her childhood favorite: chicken and pigs feet cooked slowly, meat removed from the bones and poured, with cooking liquid, lemon slices and eggs into a shallow dish where the mixture hardens into jelly --- quite different from the fantastic feasts created for the tsars by French chefs.. Example: Charlotte Russe (Russian), a custard/ladyfingers/whipped cream dessert named by a French chef in honor of his employer, Czar Alexander, and his sister, Charlotte.

Or so the legend goes.

Jewish immigrants fleeing pogroms of the late 19th century brought borscht, stuffed cabbage leaves and varenikas, similar to pirogis.

Nobody warms to the subject of Russian food faster than Ken Nalibow, retired associate professor of Russian at University of Vermont. Ken has been to the Soviet Union, later Russia, as visitor and teacher, at least 30 times, but not since 1998.

A 45-minute phoner with Ken provided total immersion. The gist, minus some of the laughs:

Most people don’t have any idea what Russians eat. If I mention Russia they say “Do they have good food?”

You don’t go to Russia to eat, although fine cooks are fine cooks no matter what they have to work with.

To get good (ingredients) you need blat --- connections. The black market flourished under the Soviets and after.

Russians are crazy about mushrooms, both wild and cultivated, preferably in cream sauce. They must know what they’re picking because Russians don’t die from the poisonous kind. They love crab.

Russians are also crazy about ice cream which is rich, expensive, without stabilizers and extenders, mostly vanilla, served in a paper dish instead of a cone.

They adore other desserts, including small fruit pies and kyeks (cakes) studded with nuts and dried fruit.

Fat isn’t an issue. Ham is served with the fatty layer attached; fat floats on the surface of soups. Sausages contain more fat than meat.

Western fast food has invaded cities. Since 1991, the world’s busiest McDonald’s serves 22,000 customers a day in Moscow’s Pushkin Square but villages remain like Tolstoy’s Russia, where peasants carry water from the source to their homes. No infrastructure, no plumbing. Cooking done on wood stoves. A Russian worker’s breakfast: a boiled egg, onions, tea, bread.

Russian bread is dark, good and accompanies everything.

Farmer cheese, a dry, crumbly cottage cheese, is as common there as Kraft slices here.

According to Nalibow, kvas, the national drink brewed from fermented black bread, tastes like “!&$@#.

The Russian language does not contain words for sandwich, garbage disposal or self-cleaning oven. Except in wealthy homes, kitchens are rudimentary. Labor-intensive Russian recipes take forever, sans Cuisinart, blenders, stand mixers, other small appliances.

After the Soviet Union fell, Russia was flooded with substandard commodities, unregulated by the government. Nalibow found even the pickled herring smelled too fishy.

One-stop supermarket shopping…nyet. Yet Russians know where to find ingredients.

Vodka will often be flavored, is kept in the freezer and knocked back neat. Not finishing your vodka is considered impolite. Vodka comes from many sources, including potatoes and buffalo grass. Some bottles have screw tops, others crimped lids like soda. This kind must be finished at one sitting.

Chickens in the market are small and scrawny. People with connections get the big, juicy ones.

More meats are pot- than dry-roasted. Shashlik (shish kabob) is popular, made from marinated whatever.

Despite shortages, lack of appliances and, for many, Dark Ages nutrition awareness, Russian cuisine is rich, hearty, socially significant, filled with complex flavors and dearly beloved by the children of Mother Russia.

But that’s not what Olympic attendees will find in Sochi where, for another week, sushi and crepes, dainty dumplings, blinis with caviar, cheese balls (called, of all things, magnolias) cop the gold. Still, it’s comforting to know that this vast, stern, frigid foreign land is only a Quarter Pounder away.

Contact Debbie Salomon at

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