Russian Food

Russian Cake and Dulche de Leche Crepe (not in picture— you can get either one!). At one point during the lockdown period, I was obsessed with a cooking game on Switch and one of the recipes is Medovik aka Russian honey layer cake. Now this might not be the best representation because there is supposed to be at least 6-7 layers of cakes but surprisingly this tastes pretty good. We always thought this was gonne be cloyingly sweet and grainy but it’s not! The cake might not be the fluffiest or most moist, but still enjoyable.

Dulche de Leche Crepe was still frozen inside when delivered to our table. Now, we didnt know what to expect and my bf just cut and ate the frozen piece thinking “maybe it’s supposed to be like this” and obviously it’s not! We sent it back to the kitchen for re-heating and it came back with oozing milk sauce from within (looks more like it). Tastes ok but too sweet for my liking.

This is the only main course of the set but tbh at this point we’re alr pretty full. The meat stew comes with some tomato and potato (and prolly some other vegetables that have disintegrated in the slow-cooked process). Taste good and not gamey but nothing unexpected.

Handmade pelmeni (dumplings). Not gonna spoil the fun of trying out different fillings of the dumplings, so I wont explain each filling of the dumplings here. Each of us got 5 different dumplings so we essentially tried 10 different fillings that day. There is a guide on the table explaining the different colour coding. Again, my expectation of dumplings is thin skin with juicy meat (xlb ftw indeed) so I was a little surprised to find the dumpling skin pretty thick. That aside, I thought some of the fillings are really yummy- our favourites are the lamb, cheese, and bacon. It comes with sour cream on the side but we both find it pretty diluted for a dipping sauce.

Ukrainian Borsh Soup. The menu says it has pork, cabbage, beetroot, tomato, and potato inside. Everything has turned really soft so I can hardly differentiate the ingredients. But I thought I couldn’t realy taste any beetroot in the soup. Again, I’ve never tried borsh soup before but I found this really refreshing and easy to like. Especially after all the cold appetisers and soup before!

Gherkin, beetroot, and smoked salo. Again the appetisers here taste like what they are. The gherkin is on the crunchier side instead of the the typical soft ones you can get from store-bought jars. The sliced beetroots are quite refreshing and are tossed with some capers. Pretty normal imo. The smoked salo is essentially roast pork belly on rye bread with a tiny dollop of hot mustard. I thought the texture was a bit weird, probably because I’m so used to siew yoke with crunchy skin and a much denser rye bread. Nothing to shout out, but again, I’m not a Russian food expert. I enjoy eating all of these but not sure how authentic they are.

It says $78 nett in BB but not sure why they added service charge to our bill in the end. The meal starts with trio appetizers comprising of preserved chopped cabbage, small green peas in mayo, and half boiled egg topped with fish roes. The first tastes somewhat like sauerkraut but it’s crunchier and less acidic. The second one is essentially made of 2 ingredients that I dislike the most: peas and mayos— they’re not that bad tbh but it tastes as is. The last one is pretty basic as well: egg and (fish) eggs. It’s hard to hate it unless you don’t like eggs. Not sure how authentic these are because I have never eaten Russian food before.