New Russian cuisine /1

While Cold War 2 is taking place, there’s a misunderstanding it is dutiful to solve: during the three days spent in Moscow’s restaurants, we haven’t met a single person who was in favour of Putin’s conduct in Crimea. There’s a large portion of citizens – the exact number in unknown, yet 50thousand rallied right away, as in the days of the White Revolution in Decembre 2011 – who don’t approve the sovereign’s movements «out of history».

This is the pro-Western Russia, bravely choosing to go in the opposite direction to the satrap who, when he’s not hunting for Siberian tigers or ancient submerged urns, «feeds on meatballs and mashed potatoes», those informed reveal. This said, let’s get to our topic. Time to abandon a second prejudgement, the one according to which Russian clients depend on a vulgar gastronomic culture. They’re said to choose only dishes with foie gras, (almost extinct) caviar from the menu, and from the wine list, only champagnes with the largest number of zeros: «I want the most expensive, spasibo». A generation of young chefs and clients is trying to find a solution for this general stereotype, by being very careful in the definition of a new Russian cuisine, paying no attention to oligarchs who in fact would go on with sausage sandwiches until their death.

Meanwhile, it may seem strange, for a fine dining establishment the real challenge is attracting people to the restaurant to dine and not, as has always been the case, to drink and smoke. This is explained by the young look and the rather loud music that can be found even in ambitious restaurants [we’ll speak about it in the next episodes]: they look more like clubs than Western-style gourmet temples. This is not a bad thing, considering the sepulchral austerity of many of our restaurants (not to mention the fact that a few days ago Renè Redzepi tweeted that 50% of his clients are under 35 and half of them wears a t-shirt). Besides, the temptation for drinking only is deterred by public authorities (try driving afterwards, if you dare).

So we have enough lucidity to understand along which horizons the New Russian Cuisine intends to design itself. With regards to both space and time. Because on one hand, there’s the desire to understand authentic traditions and recipes preceding the 1917 revolution, when the creation of the Soviet Union began to portion rations while eliminating delicacies and ingredients popular under the czarist regime. On the other hand, they want to trace the spatial borders that used to be enormous until 1991 when the same Union broke up into 16 pieces.

Can borsch, the beetroot soup, today a national Russian dish, be legitimately considered so when its origins are notoriously Ukrainian? And isn’t the ever present plov – rice with meat, carrots au gratin and onions – Uzbek? And how about the satsivi nut sauce - isn’t it Georgian? Popular recipes did not retreat after the fall of the Wall and this is a heritage that makes Muscovite chefs happy. Meanwhile, they obviously look with admiration at the techniques that arrive from the West, especially those taken from classic French cuisine but also from the New Italian cuisine – Massimo Bottura and Massimiliano Alajmo above all – and are charmed by Nordic cuisine, which has extended its icy branches to the urban banks of the Moskva River.

1. to be continued