The Red Square Taste

In the 1990s, Italian quickly became the most popular foreign cuisine, and carbonara, pizza, and a Moscow-invented arugula salad with shrimps began to travel to home kitchens. 

At the same time, the Italian coffee culture came to Moscow, and espresso machines appeared first in restaurants and then in homes. Later, Caesar, burgers and sushi were added to the range of popular Moscow dishes.

Restaurateurs have been taking advantage of Muscovites’ love for pizza and all pizza-like pastry for the past 30 years. 

In the meantime, Moscow had undergone at least three waves of pizza popularity, starting from American thick-crust pizza with exotic toppings (for example, Hawaiian pizza with canned ham and pineapple), moving on to the thinly-rolled Neapolitan ‘classic,’ and now with the fashion for pinsa — a Roman pizza made from a combination of flours (wheat, soy, rice) with a longer fermentation time. One of the restaurants to visit for the right sort of pizza today is Maestrello.

Moscow loves khachapuri – Georgian pirogi (pies) with cheese, sometimes called Georgian pizza. Adjara-style khachapuri is the most photogenic kind: an open pie in the form of a boat with egg yolk in the center. 

It is so popular that this basic recipe takes on its own style in various restaurants. 

The first real burger that Moscow ever tried was the hamburger. It happened in 1990, on Pushkin Square, where the first Russian restaurant of a well-known international chain is in business to this day. 

This Vietnamese soup with a strong broth base, beef, rice noodles, and vegetables, dressed with fish sauce and hot chili peppers, exploded onto the Moscow restaurant market in the early 2010s and has since become something along the lines of borsch.

Few attempt to make it at home, but any tiny eatery that offers phở bò on the menu is guaranteed to succeed.

Since the 16th century, the capital had been growing in size and wealth, and with it increased the complexity and variety of the menu at the imperial court and for those who served there. 

Moscow began to purchase foreign wines and spices more often, and developing trade routes allowed for products from various regions of the country to be delivered to rich people’s tables. Old Moscow cuisine began to incorporate foreign recipes and products.

In the 12th century, the area of the present-day Red Square was used as a marketplace. Up until the 20th century, this location housed the city’s central market. 

Products were divided into trade rows: kalachny – bread, grechnevy – buckwheat, molochny – dairy, oreshny – nuts, vetoshny – fabrics, khrustalny – crystal. Some of these rows lent their names to nearby side streets. Merchants selling kvas and sbiten, traditional drinks, wandered between rows. Vegetables and berries were sold at stalls and from carts.  

The most famous Moscow bakers were representatives of the Filippov baking dynasty. They were the ones who made the Moscow kalach with dough that underwent long fermentation in the cold their trademark, known nationwide. 

At the end of the 19th century, workshops were added to the Filippov bakeries, making baranki, sukhariki, pastries, cakes, kalachi, and rasstegai. 

In 1714, Saint Petersburg became the capital of Russia and the destination for the majority of foreign restaurateurs. As a result, Moscow managed to maintain Russian cuisine practically pristine: 

there were very few restaurants, and almost everyone went to traktirs (closer to a brasserie than a restaurant in the European understanding). 

Traktirs served Russian food in large portions, in contrast to the few restaurants, where dishes were French – or ‘Frenchified’ – and portions were – to the Russians – rather small. 

The best taverns were well-known in and outside of Moscow: it was not just well-off Muscovites that lunched at Testov’s, or Yegorov’s, or Gurin’s, but also people who came to town for business or leisure. 

Many traktirs had their own signature dishes worthy of a dedicated visit: Yegorov’s traktir was famous for its blini (pancakes), Testov’s traktir was known for its baidakovsky pirog (coulibiac – pie – with 12 layers of filling), solyanka, and roast suckling pig.

Adolf Siu brought French confectionery traditions to Russia and promoted products that were little-known at the time – toffee and chocolate dragées, including liquor-filled chocolates.

Siu achieved fame for his invention of the Yubileynoe (anniversary) cookie, released in 1913 to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the Romanov dynasty. 

During World War II, tens of thousands of people living in central Russia were evacuated to Tashkent and other Central Asian cities.

Housewives had to adapt to unfamiliar ingredients and recipes. It was there that residents of central Russia learned how to prepare Central Asian plov and manty (dumplings).