From Fermentation to Gastrobotany

Restaurant critic Igor Gubernsky is the founder and president of the Moscow Gastronomic Festival and Moscow Restaurant Week, two major events that pick Moscow’s best dishes and restaurants. 

Russian cuisine has always been the cuisine of the peoples that made Russia their home. From Poland and Romania, through Ukraine, Georgia and Central Asia to the Far East, every Russian restaurant offers dishes inspired by a fusion of these cuisines. Fusion is one of key features of Russian-style cooking. 

In terms of its dining scene, Russia is a vast land stretching across several natural zones. Its cuisine suffered a drastic change in the 20th century when its agriculture was destroyed and stayed altered for 80 years leading to a dramatic loss of knowledge and skill necessary  to make or grow first-class foods. 

Food was rationed. 
This was the birth conditions of the Soviet cuisine, a cuisine in name only, which laid the foundation of contemporary Russian cuisine, itself a fusion geographically, historically and culturally.

One dish to try is the Valaam Monastery porcini mushroom soup that has been known for 500 years.  

In the 21st century, new Russian enthusiasts began bridging the gap between Old Russia and modernity. We are actually witnessing the creation of a contemporary Russian cuisine based on natural foods and driven by a desire to found the world's best restaurants.

Chefs continually learn from prominent professionals, while designers and restaurateurs are constantly travelling and creating interiors inspired by what they see both in Russia and abroad. 

A search for the staples of this new cuisine will lead to seafood that includes Kamchatka crab, Far Eastern scallops, squid, Murmansk cod, Black Sea flounder, mussels and, of course, caviar, the queen of the Russian table.

A chef's technique and vision will turn these into unique French, Mediterranean, Asian dishes.

The best chefs will find a way for their creativity. A key feature signalling out renowned Moscow and St. Petersburg chefs is that they disregard conventions in favour of good taste.  

This style is common among the best of the best, and popular with the public that can't stand a bland offer lacking diversity. The explanation here is simple. 

Russia is in a completely different place with restaurant-goers mostly living nearby and quickly becoming bored if the menu doesn't change every month or two.

White Rabbit's chef Vladimir Mukhin whisked together a Napoleon cake out of rye bread, cured pork and black caviar. Cured pork, incidentally, contained cocoa.

Today, any chef worth their salt has their farmer connections that supply him or her with the best products from vegetables and root vegetables to cheese and butter, the staples of a good modern restaurant. 

Dishes like that are on the menu at the Beluga, BURO. TSUM, and Twins Garden restaurants, the latter also serving morels, penny buns and birth boletuses with wine from the same mushroom species. 

Trying it all together is a good way to savour fermented flavours and aromas in the full palette of mushroom tastes.

Cafe Pushkin best serves the smart variation of Russian cuisine heavily influenced by French, while the most iconic features of Soviet cuisine are to be found at Dr. Zhivago and Voskhod. 

Russian restaurants and chefs are already in the world's top rankings. But there is also the traditional Russian cuisine, well on display at Matryoshka whose enthusiastic chef Vlad Piskunov is reviving Russia's cooking traditions based on old recipes.