The Russians excel at hearty meat and vegetable-based soups. Caviar, smoked sausage, pickles, field mushrooms, cheese and soured cream for the basis for zakuski (hors d’oeuvres or appetisers) - a popular dish.Try also savoury piroshki (a stuffed pastry), shashlik (skewered meat), kharcho (spicy meat soup), khachipuri (bread with melted cheese), borscht (beetroot soup), pirozhki (meat wrapped in blanket of pastry), pel'meni (something like ravioli) and blini (savoury stuffed pancakes).
Beef Stroganoff (invented in Russia, as was chicken Kiev), pelmeny (Siberian-style dumplings) and spicy Georgian cuisine such as shashlyk. Russian rye bread is flavoursome and most often eaten without butter. Fish varieties include - omul (similar to salmon and from Lake Baikal) and sturgeon - often poached and served with a sauce or mushrooms. Pickled fish is a popular starter, while main courses are predominantly meat-based, typically accompanied by rice or potatoes and a carrot or cabbage salad.
The national drink is an inseparable part of Russian social life. Vodka is drunk everywhere, the Russians usually offer saying dusha-dushe that he means soul-to-soul. Vodka is often flavored and colored with herbs and spices. Limonnaya, lemon-flavored vodka, is particularly popular with American tourists, as is pertsovka, pepper-flavored vodka. Other varieties include starka (a dark, smooth "old" vodka), pshenichnaya (made from wheat), ryabinovka (in which ashberries have been steeped), and tminnaya (caraway-flavored vodka). Be wary of krepkaya vodka, this is the strongest variety. RESTAURANTS Moscow has a huge variety of restaurants and cafes for every taste. Although Russian food is characteristically rich and filling the variety the visitor will find is one of Moscow's best-kept secrets. With restaurants, cafes, pubs and bars on every corner and in between, diners have their choice of cuisines from all over the world. While the best of the tourist restaurants can be extremely expensive by Russian standards they are quite reasonable when compared to other capital cities. However you should note that it is easily possible to eat for a very low price (under 30 roubles ($1)) at small street kiosks. TEA & COFFEE SALONS
Being a populous city, Moscow has a lot of cafes and a good selection of tea saloons. Beyond them, high-quality infusion teas are widely available in cafes, both pocketed and loose. Asking to add boiling water to the tea you ordered earlier is a practice that some cafes don't welcome--but normally it's acceptable. Tea and Caffee salons add to the over all attraction of Moscow as a city. Some of these salons are located in the down town Moscow while few are scattered towards the outer fringe of the city