Russia Travel Guide

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Cuisine

The kind of food visitors will eat from day to day depends on which city they are visiting and the time of year. Breakfast is often similar to that eaten in Scandinavian countries, with cold meats, boiled eggs and bread served with Russian tea. For the midday and evening meal the food is often more traditional, again depending on the region. In Moscow, St Petersburg and many other larger cities good quality (if expensive) international cuisine is readily available.

Things to know: City-center bars are usually open until the early hours. Drinking on the street is considered perfectly acceptable.

National specialties:
• Kasha (porridge) is a staple breakfast dish, made with milk and oats, buckwheat or semolina.
• Blini (small pancakes filled with caviar, fish, melted butter or sour cream).
• Ponchiki (hot sugared doughnuts).
• Pirozhky (fried rolls with different fillings, usually meat).
• Borshch (a beetroot soup served hot with sour cream).
• Pelmeni (meat dumplings).

National drinks:
• Chai (sweet tea served without milk).
• Vodka is often flavored and colored with herbs and spices, such as zubrovka (made with a kind of grass), ryabinovka (steeped with rowan-tree berries), starka (a dark, smooth, aged vodka) and pertsovka (made with hot pepper). Russky Standard, Stolichnaya and Gzhelka are popular brands.
• Krushon (cold ‘punch’; champagne, brandy and summer fruits are poured into a hollowed watermelon and chilled for several hours).
• Nalivka (sweet liqueur made with fruit or berries).
• Nastoika (fortified wine made of herbs, leaves, flowers, fruit and roots of plants with medicinal properties).

Tipping: Hotels in Moscow and other large cities include a 10 to 15% service charge. Otherwise 10% is customary.

Nightlife

Theater, circus, concert and variety performances are the traditional evening entertainments. Tickets are available in advance or from ticket booths immediately before performances. Visitors should note that prices for foreigners are usually much higher than those paid by Russian nationals. The repertoire of theaters provides a change of program almost nightly. In the course of one month, 30 different productions may be presented by the Bolshoi Opera and Ballet Company. Visitors can get more information at the service bureau of their hotel.

Nightclubs and bars are also very popular, particularly in Moscow, St Petersburg and other cities. It's quite possible to enjoy these for drinking and dancing in, though some nightclubs and bars (particularly those in hotels and those outside Moscow and St Petersburg) are little more than arenas for meeting prostitutes.