Los Angeles Russian Restaurants

Solyanka (Russian and Ukrainian: соля́нка) is a thick, spicy and sour soup in the Russian and Ukrainian cuisine. Solyanka with olives There are mainly three different kinds of solyanka, with the main ingredient being either meat, fish or mushrooms. All of them contain pickled cucumbers with brine, and often cabbage, salty mushrooms, smetana (sour cream) and dill. The soup is prepared by cooking the cucumbers with brine before adding the other ingredients of the broth. Solyanka is also popular in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR – East Germany), where it is commonly found in restaurants and available in canned form in grocery stores. (The German transliteration is Soljanka.) This practice stems from the era when Soviet troops were stationed in the GDR, and Soljanka was to be found on the menu at many East German restaurants.

Veal Prince Orloff, Veal Prince Orlov, Veal Orloff, or Veal Orlov (Russian: Телятина Орлов Telyátina Orlóv) is a 19th century dish of Franco-Russian cuisine. Created by an Urbain Dubois in the employ of Prince Orloff, former Russian ambassador to France, this dish consists of a braised loin of veal, thinly sliced, filled with a thin layer of pureed mushrooms and onions between each slice, and stacked back. It is then topped with bechamel sauce and cheese and browned in the oven.

The Mary Tyler Moore Show used the dish as a plot point in “The Dinner Party”, a memorable episode in the sitcom’s fourth season (1973). Exactly six servings of veal prince orloff are prepared by the happy homemaker, Sue Ann Nivens (Betty White), for Mary to serve. Not only does a seventh, uninvited guest show up (played by a pre-Fonz Henry Winkler), but also Lou Grant (Ed Asner) takes three servings off the plate and has to put two back. “I’m not as hungry as I thought I was,” he growls to the other dinner guests.

On the Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, Sue Ann Nivens refers to Julia Child. Veal prince orloff’ appears in ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking,’ by Julia Child, Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck.

As a culinary term, “service à la russe”, which came into use in the early 19th century, means a style of dining in which courses are brought to the table in a sequence. There are also other rules under service à la russe, governing everything from the flatware arrangement to the plate size, but its most distinguishing feature is the sequential manner of serving the courses. Cold appetizers are generally followed by soup, then fish, then the main course, then the dessert, then the cheese, and finished with coffee and sweet liquors. This is distinguished from service à la française, in which all dishes are brought to the table simultaneously. Service à la russe quickly caught on, however, and it is the style in which most restaurants today serve their food.

In terms of actual Russian traditions today, I’ll try to answer briefly without going into the specifics of ethnic cuisine, and will concentrate on festive dining. I say “festive” because fine dining in Russia, as exemplified by the traditional service à la russe, is pretty much identical to that in the West, but holiday dining traditions in families and ordinary restaurants are markedly different.

Charlotte russe is a dessert invented by the French chef Marie Antoine Carême (1784-1833), who named it in honor of his Russian employer Czar Alexander I (russe being the French word for “Russian”). It is a cold dessert of Bavarian cream set in a mold lined with ladyfingers. One etymology suggests it is a corruption of the Old English word charlyt meaning “a dish of custard.” There is a lot of doubt surrounding the origins of the name charlotte. Meat dishes that were known as charlets were popular in the 15th century. Other historians say that this sweet dish took its name from Queen Charlotte (1744-1818), wife of George III. It is also possible that the dessert takes its name from Alexander I’s sister-in-law, Charlotte of Prussia. Charlotte russe is mentioned in the song “This Could Be the Start of Something (Big)” from the 1954 TV musical production The Bachelor, composed by Steve Allen and in the song “Captain Custard,” performed by Bob Hope and Bing Crosby in the 1940 Paramount film Road to Singapore.

After the fall of Imperial Russia, Beef stroganoff was popularly served in the hotels and restaurants of China before the start of the Second World War. Russian and Chinese immigrants, as well as U.S. servicemen stationed in pre-Communist China, brought several variants of the dish to the United States, which may account for its popularity during the 1950s. In the version often prepared in the USA today, it consists of strips of beef filet with a mushroom, onion, and sour cream sauce and served over rice or noodles.

In the UK and Australia a recipe very similar to that commonly found in the USA has become popular, generally served with rice.

Chicken Kiev is a dish of boneless chicken breast pounded and rolled around cold unsalted butter, then breaded and fried. As its popularity has spread internationally, various seasonings have been added to the butter, most commonly garlic.

This famous method of preparing chicken is not of Ukrainian origin as the name Kiev, the national capital, would imply. The Russian food historian V. Pokhlyobkin claimed that Chicken Kiev was invented in the Moscow Merchants’ Club in the early 20th century and was renamed Chicken Kiev (kotleta po-kievski) in one of the Soviet restaurants in later years.

There are other versions of Chicken Kiev; particularly popular is a cheese and ham filling or just cheese.

Almost all Russian traditional drinks are original from Russia and are not present in other national cuisines. Those are sbiten’, kvass, medovukha and mors. Many of them are no longer in use long since they were drunk as a complement to meat and poultry dishes, sweet porridge, and dessert. Standing apart from all of them was sbiten, which was replaced by tea by later times in Russia. One of the most ancient drinks is Medovukha, derived from the word “med,” for honey. It should not be confused with the so-called stavlenniy myod (brewed honey, mead); medok is made of water with small amounts of honey and sometimes hops, “stavlenniy myod” is an alcoholic drink not unlike wine, based on large amount of honey and berry juices. Mors is made of berry juice, mixed in different proportions with water. Kvass and sbiten on the other hand were always mass-produced drinks. Most widespread was kvass, having a few dozen variations.

Russian salad or Salade russe also known as Salade Olivier is a salad composed of diced potato, vegetables and sometimes meats bound in mayonnaise. In many countries it is called “Olivier” salad, in the United States Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Iran (is spelled when retranscribed “olivieh” in Persian and “oliv’e” or “olivye” оливье in Russian).
The original version of the salad was invented in the 1860s by Lucien Olivier, the chef of the Hermitage restaurant, one of Moscow’s most celebrated restaurants. Olivier’s salad quickly became immensely popular with Hermitage regulars, and became the restaurant’s signature dish.

The exact recipe — particularly that of the dressing — was a jealously guarded secret, but it is known that the salad contained grouse, veal tongue, caviar, lettuce, crayfish tails, capers, gherkins, cucumbers, hard-boiled eggs and soy beans. Other reported ingredients included truffles, cubed aspic and smoked duck, although it is possible that the recipe was varied seasonally. The original Olivier dressing was a type of mayonnaise, made with French wine vinegar, mustard, and Provencal olive oil; its exact recipe, however, remains unknown.

However, the dish certainly did not contain potatoes — the main ingredient in today’s Salade Russe a/k/a Salade Olivier.

Omelets – usually eaten in the morning

Sausages – usually served two sausages with ketchup

Pelmeni – favourite Russian dish

Pelmeni. (Photo from Kuking.Net)

Chops (kotlety) – made of various kind of meat in various regions

Pelmeny – (on the photo) the small balls of minced meat covered with the pastry

Vareniky – it looks like pelmeny however inside the pastry there is no meat but berries, potato or curds

Steak (otbivnaya) – beef and pork ones are most popular

Beef stroganov – pieces of beef prepared with cream sauce

Kiev style chicken (kotleta po-kievsky) – the special type of chicken chop with butter inside

Potato with mushrooms – favourite countryside meal

Beef Stroganoff or Beef-Stroganov (in Russian: Беф-Строганов Bef-Stróganov) is a Russian dish of sautéed pieces of beef served in a sauce with sour cream. From its origins in 19th-century Russia, it has become popular in much of Iran, Europe, North America, Australia, South Africa, and Brazil, with considerable variation in the actual recipe. The dish is named after the Stroganov family, a distinguished Russian family involved in the settlement of Siberia, although the exact history of the name is unknown. Recipes of braised meats finished with sour cream are fairly typical of medieval Russian cookery. Elena Molokhovets’ classic Russian cookbook (1861) gives the first known recipe for Govjadina po-strogonovski, s gorchitseju “Beef Stroganov with mustard” which involves lightly floured beef cubes (not strips) sautéed, sauced with prepared mustard and bouillon, and finished with a small amount of sour cream: no onions, no mushrooms. A 1912 recipe adds onions and tomato paste and serves it with crisp potato straws, which are considered the traditional garnish in Russia. The version given in the 1938 Larousse Gastronomique includes beef strips, and onions, with either mustard or tomato paste optional.