WHAT THEY EAT IN RUSSIA | DELICIOUS Moscow Food Tour!

When we drink in Russia, we never just. We never say cheers for something. We always make a toast. We always drink for something. For good health, for more food. More food is coming so quickly.

Today is day four in Moscow, and today we're doing one of our favorite things to do when we visit a new city.

We are going on a food tour. We are extra excited about this food tour. One, because we haven't had a ton of Russian food since we've been here. And two, we really don't know how to order or what to order because the language barrier has proved to be pretty difficult. So thankfully, we're going on a private tour today and we're going to get taken around all the best spots and.

Try out all the Russian foods.

So our guy's name is Katerina. She taught Russian in the US For a long time and went to school there. So she speaks really good English. We've already learned a ton. She said we're going to stop at like four or five places today, attract all the good Russian food and even some Georgian food.

It's a mechanic of wild bees.

Wow.

And as this girl made a joke, so bears bring it to them to change for raspberries.

That is really good.

So that big walking street we were just on always has little booths set up on it, like a little market. And they're pretty much year round. Apparently the Russians always have something to celebrate. Whatever is in season, that's what they're selling. And they're always changing.

So we stopped at the honey booth and got to try some local honey. And we learned a very interesting urban legend in Russia. Like, one of the oldest drinks here is called mead, and it's a honey wine that's slightly alcoholic. And in order to.

In order to encourage newlyweds to reproduce, they would mix and drink honeywine for a month. And so legend goes that that's where the term honeymoon comes from. Don't know if it's true or not. Thank you very much.

We just rode the metro a couple stops to a new part of town. Our first proper meal is a Ukrainian Russian restaurant. Apparently, despite their differences, their food is very similar. I've only eaten one scoop of peanut butter today in preparation for all the food.

Trying the mystery snack.

It doesn't have much of a smell.

So do you know what is on the outside?

No.

It's fat, actually.

Oh, it's fat. One kind of fat. In Russia, it's traditional to have little snacks when you drink, including pork fat wrapped around part of a garlic plant. And I was Tricked into eating the pork fat. It's actually pretty good. Katerina's ordering for us. It's really nice to have a Russian know what to order.

So the first thing we can try is this bread. So I suggest you trying and then try to guess what it might be.

It looks like raw meat and it smells like garlic.

Garlic.

There is garlic here.

It's good.

It's really, really good.

Again, this is fox fat, but it's like minced, like to make it like a spread and they add different herbs and also garlic and you put it on bread just to start the meal. So this is based on vodka and they cranberry.

Like juice. In.

Russia, we usually say vas daroviye, vas da ro, which means your health. So we wish you health.

It's not that strong.

It's not that strong.

So this is borsch and usually you eat it with sour cream and pampushka or this garlic bread. And also we have dumplings. In Russian we call it.

I'm a huge fan of Russian dumplings.

So in addition to all of these delicious foods, we are also trying some local drinks. This is kvass. It's like a fermented bread drink made from rye bread. It kind of tastes like a mix between coke and beer. It definitely has like a really unique flavor. It's slightly carbonated, but probably the most interesting thing is it's slightly alcoholic, but the kids still drink it. So it's like the kids beer. All this food has been incredibly delicious. I could eat everything on this table. But we're just getting started with the food tour. Oh, just a tiny bit.

That's by means.

So we were walking out of the restaurant and they offered us. It's similar to the vodka cranberry juice, except this is basically vodka with horseradish in it.

Mmm. It burns in so many ways. Do I have to finish it to be bite?

Alright, let's go.

I hope you still have space in your belly.

That was a big stop, but I think I have room. So our next restaurant is Georgian food, which apparently is a huge part of the Russian cuisine. Our guide compared it to Mexican food in the us which I feel like it's really good at allergies. Really excited to try it.

They might have different meat.

So here we have a traditional drink. It's called tarkum.

Very good. So the main ingredient here is ESP or tarragon.

Tarragon.

I knew I smelled some kind of.

Center.

Traditional soup, Georgian or Armenian. So it's typical of Caucasus racing and Lulekiba, Time to try.

We have another full table of food, starting with this pizza like dish. It is cheese and bread and it is so good.

So the main thing is the juice, which is inside. So that's why you have this pot. So and it's very important to hold here. So you just bite a little bit and make sure the juice is not gonna go out.

I'm glad you warned me. Are you ready? Uh huh. Let's try it.

Mmm.

Mmm.

Mm.

Mm.

There's like soup in there that would have gone all over my face if you wouldn't have told me.

I mean, there's so many dishes. It's just like a little bit of tasting, a little bit of tasting of Georgia. So maybe your next destination should be Georgia. Our next stop is gonna be in the center of Moscow, closer to Red Square in the famous department store, which is called gum.

Yes, yes, yes.

Most foreigners call it gum. And I always say it's not a chewing gum at all. Gum means the main department store of Moscow. It's the acronym.

So we were all getting on the train and I jumped on first and as soon as I did, the door slammed behind me. So I'm currently split up from Cara and Katarina, but they should be showing up on the next train, hopefully. I think that was the plan. One stop. So I'm just waiting here.

And there they are.

Easy.

Sweet.

So you can see Red Square over there. And this is actually the upper trading road. So because back in times, Red Square was known as Market Square. It was hustle and bustle with street traders and it was called Red Square. Only people started calling it only in the 17th century, because in the old Russian language, red meant beautiful. So red, it's not related with the color of the wall of the Kremlin or communist times or bloodshed. Basically. Red also meant beautiful in Russian. It's krasna flocin.

It's okay.

Yeah, it's good.

So we've just come inside a grocery store store in the goom. This is grocery store number one. So back during Soviet times, they actually used to number the grocery stores and this was number one. So it was like the main grocery store. And they kept it essentially exactly the same. I think there's a lot more variety in the food than there was in Soviet times. But like, it looks exactly the same as it used to.

So in addition to a Soviet grocery store in this mall, they also have a old school Soviet cafeteria, which is like, not like a restaurant, it's more like a serve yourself type of place. We're going to check it out now.

One of my favorite stops, coffee and dessert.

So we picked this up from the grocery store. It was actually in the cheese section. Katarina says that she eats it for breakfast, but you can really eat it anytime. And it's kind of like cheesecake. It's really cottage cheese covered in chocolate.

Mmm.

It's like the richest cheesecake I've ever had. Like, it's not a cheesecake, but that's what it tastes like. I would totally eat this for breakfast. What is it called?

It's called.

I love it.

It's hard to pronounce.

We are ending this tour by trying some Russian chocolate.

It's so light.

It is now 7pm, which means that we have been eating for the last five hours.

But not only eating, we have learned so much. Katarina was just constantly telling us stories and history and they were like, really good.

I love food tours that incorporate food and history. And I learned so, so much about Russia today.

Yeah. And she had so many personal stories too about like, Soviet times with her parents. And that just made it so cool.

And she lived through part of the Soviet times. So it was just like a very unique, very, very awesome tour.

But this company does not only do food tours. That's what we did, obviously. But you can do any kind of tour, one day tour, two days. They do just a walking tour.

They do customized tours. So basically, like whatever you want to do when you come to Moscow, they can set it up for you. She was telling us they had a girl that was interested in violins and composers and they set up an entire tour for her.

Yeah. So if you're coming to Moscow, you have to check the link in the description. And I think they're expanding to other cities too.

We do a lot of tours and I can say that this one, like, definitely ranks up at the top. So we didn't do all their other stuff, but we can highly recommend anything they do because it's very high quality.

Especially the food tour.

It was so good cuz, like, this is our last full day in Moscow. We're leaving to get on the Trans Siberian tomorrow. And I was kind of feeling like before this tour, like we just barely scratched the surface. But I feel like we learned so much today.

Yeah. And ate so much.

Thank you, Katarina, for the awesome tour. And go check out Bridge to Moscow link below.

Now this is a mall which is full of very expensive boutiques. You can see Stalin is walking around sometimes Lenin is walking around as well.

Katarina is adorable.

Really taken to the camera.

I can only, like, repeat it a second after you say it, and then it just leaves my brain. It's hard. It's really hard. It's hard for my mouth to do that.

Job.