DIY FOOD TOUR Trans-Siberian Day 5 | Russian & Mongolian Foods!

Today is day five on our Trans Siberian journey, and this morning we are in the city of Irkuts. So somewhere, like, halfway along the Trans Siberian. And from what we've read, there's not necessarily, like, one big thing to see in the city except for Lake Baikal, which we saw yesterday. So today we are going to wander around the city and do our own DIY food tour.

We put together a list of foods that we've heard about since we've been here that we didn't even know about when we were in Moscow. So we're going to do our best to find as many as we can, but we're not making any promises that we can find more than five of them because the language bears a little. You don't know how to find them. Except for the first one. We know where that one is. We're super close to Mongolia, so there's this, like, Asian European fusion that makes for a lot of unique foods. So I'm excited.

So we have 11. We're hoping to find at least five.

So for the first stop on our food tour, we've come to this giant sports complex because somebody on the Internet recommended it to us. There's supposed to be this restaurant down in the bottom of it that serves these bun things that we're looking for. I think they're called booze or boozies. B U U Z I think is the English translation in Russian. I have no clue what it is, but yeah. So we're going to the sports complex.

So the menu is all acrylic, which is expected. I tried to Google Translate it, but it says things like carrot on Korean salad, mushroom. It just really doesn't make much sense. But thankfully, a guy walked in, we let him go in front of us, and he ordered the boozy, which is what we wanted.

So we.

We just pointed to it and said four. Maybe there's different inside stuffings, Maybe not. I don't know. The lady was super nice.

I'm so excited. No idea what's inside these, but they are steaming hot. I'm hoping it's not filled with liquid like the ones we had at the Georgian restaurant. It's really gonna remind me of them.

It is. It is. Lots of liquid.

Okay. I'm gonna use the techn we learned on our food tour at the Georgian restaurant. You bite into it, you have to drink all of the juice, then eat the rest.

It's like drinking soup out of a dumpling. Except for the other ones we had were easier to eat because they had a little Handle at the top, but still very good. The outside is like your typical flour dough dumpling and the inside is kind of like a little burger patty. There's more juice. I really wish we wouldn't have committed to this food tour because I would have ordered like seven more boozies. Those were so good.

But we have another, what I assume will be delicious meal next. There's this like Mongolian noodle dish that we've heard we need to try here. So I've googled a place that's like a 10 minute walk from here and that's where we're heading now. I really hope that our next waitress at our next restaurant is as nice as that lady because even though I'm sure it was super annoying because we couldn't communicate with her at all, she was super nice to us. She was.

We were looking at pictures of things on our list and showing her to see if she had them. She said no.

I think some people might not appreciate the work that goes into creating one of these food tours where you can't communicate with people. Like, we're going to have to go to a ton of places and ask a ton of stupid questions in order to get these foods.

What are crane sticks? It keeps translating crane sticks.

This is just called crumb pigeons liver rowing sauce.

We thought we might have a change of plans. We found a menu of pictures and got really excited, but unfortunately none of them were on our list.

We're hoping to find the Mongolian noodles here and anything else on our list.

So this restaurant is much fancier than we thought it was going to be. And there's nobody in here, which is normally two signs for us not to eat at a restaurant. But we walked 20 minutes to get here, so we're staying. It's also the middle of the afternoon. It is currently 3:50, so it's not a minute. So that makes me feel a little bit better about nobody being in here. I talked really fast and started running out of breath.

Our food just came. Everything looks so good. We showed our waiter a picture and this is what he brought out. So we're not certain he knew what we were trying to order. I'm really glad we got it either way because it looks amazing. We think that it is shangy, which we read somebody called it Nomad pizza, but basically it's like a dough made out of lamb fat. And apparently it's traditional to put toppings on top or sauces. And we found that everything in Russia comes with sour cream, which is amazing.

It's delicious. It's like a really greasy, flat pancake.

So where we're located now, in Irkuts, we are within 100 miles of the Mongolian border. So a lot of the food here has a Mongolian influence. And this is one of the dishes. So from what I understand, this is basically like a Mongolian noodle stir fry that I think has beef in it. This is probably the dish when we were making the list that I was most excited to try.

I was right to be so excited about this. This is delicious. It's a bit greasy, kind of like carrots. But the noodles are nice and chewy. The beef has a fantastic flavor. And this is by far the best noodles that I've had in the past week. But it helps that all of my other noodles were cooked with hot water. Instant noodles on the train.

I can't believe we've only tried three things on our list. They've all been super heavy, and I'm getting full. But now we are going to the market here in Eerkutz. It's every day. It's supposed to be huge. I don't know if they have anything on our list, but it'll be good.

To walk around a little bit.

We have found the food market.

This is a super impressive market. All the fruits and veggies are so big and beautiful, but it seems like that's all there is out here. So we're gonna see what's inside.

Now.

This place is massive. Right now we're in the dairy section, and all these ladies have these huge buckets of homemade cheese that locals are coming up and buying. Pretty sure there's fish over there, and I think there's a meat section somewhere else.

Where you go, yeah.

How do you speak a little English?

So we've been walking around, looking at all this fish, trying to decide if we can eat it. I think it's smoked fish and it's edible. Or this lady's pulling a trick off. She says it's good. This is Omul, which is on the list from late by call, which is where we were yesterday.

That's really good. Yeah, it's really good. She's like, that's good.

How much for one?

Thank you. Thank you. Thank. That all happened super fast. We were, like, kind of looking at the fish, trying to decide what we were gonna do. And then next thing I knew, she was like, try it, try it, try it. So she was super nice. So we went ahead and bought an entire fish one because I felt bad, and I wanted to give her a little bit of money for eating her fish and two, because now Kara has to try it.

I don't know how to eat it. She cut you such a perfect little piece and now I'm stuck with this big thing with bones in it and skin.

Oh, there you go.

It smells really good. Nice and smok.

The.

Yeah, it's like super greasy or oily might be the better word. It's like super smoked. Like it's not even fishy at all.

I just don't know if I want any more.

I'm really glad we got to mark the fish off. I was scared after we went to LA call yesterday and we didn't try the fish we weren't going to get to. And that was like the one thing that people were like, you have to try them.

We've seen them everywhere. And I've honestly been trying to avoid trying it but I found maybe we can give it to somebody since we only took a bite out of it.

Kara demanded a reward for eating the smoked fish.

Not what happened.

Super Russian ice cream.

Oh, that's good. Good. One of the best I've had so I couldn't pass it up. Even though we've had this before here in Russia. This is kvass, which is like a fermented bread drink. And I think I've explained it before. It's like every time I drink it I'm like, do I really like this? But then I always need more. So I've only had it out of like the bottle and this is like a fresh tap I guess. Almost like you'd see beer come out the of though which it kind of reminds me of beer. So that makes sense. So we only got four of the. I think we added some more maybe 14 foods that are now on the list. But we're both super cool. We actually just spent like 30 minutes to an hour walking around looking for two of the local drinks that were on our list cuz we were too full to eat anything else and we couldn't find them. So we're deciding to end it here. And even though we only tried four, I still feel like it was a super successful day. I can't think of a better way to spend a day in her cuts. Like we just got to walk around, see the city and we had the excuse of like going from place to place to eat a bunch of delicious foods. And even though we only tried for our next town that we're going to is only like 6 and 12 hours away from here, it's also close to Mongolia and I assume it'll have a lot of the same foods. So when we're in ulan, uh.

Can you just put the text on the screen? We'll see if we can find some more of those foods that are on this list.

So many berries and pigeons.