A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [48]
In all likelihood, you will make it away from the table without disgracing yourself. You will probably make it home without help. After that, however, you’re on your own. Remember: They’re professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jäger shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don’t forget that the Russians – any Russian – can drink you under the table.
Be prepared, by the way, no matter how bad you might feel when you wake up, to do it again – with breakfast.
Zamir and I finished our reindeer (which tasted like slightly gamier venison) and strolled outside in the knee-deep snow. Near the restaurant, an area had been cleared and iced for skating. Kids played around a straw figure representing winter; it would be burned in effigy that night at the Farewell to Winter festivities. Families with children and toboggans and sleds slogged in heavy overcoats and fur hats from nearby homes, looking cheerful and excited, red-faced in the cold.
‘I should put reindeer on our Christmas menu,’ I mused out loud. ‘Can you picture it? All those crying kids, wondering if that’s a chunk of Rudolph or Blitzen lying on their plate?’
‘I take it you don’t have children,’ observed Zamir.
We ate piroshki in town, at a Russian fast-food joint. Adorable-looking women in white-peaked caps and spotless red-and-white uniforms with low décolletage dished up pastries filled with meat, fish, cabbage, and sausages. Put out of your mind, by the way, any idea that Russian women are all wide-bodied babushkas with faces like potatoes. They’re not. I’d never seen so many tall, beautiful, well-dressed women in one place in my life. That they seem about as soft and cuddly as a fistful of quarters is beside the point – they’re gorgeous. At a blintz place, My Mother-in-Law’s Blintzes, more creamy-white-breasted girls behind a spotless counter efficiently prepared and served made-to-order crepes wrapped around various sweet and savory fillings.
We ate ukha, a clear fish soup, and wood-roasted trout on Krestovsky Island, a two-story structure by a frozen pond. The cooks were out back, dressed in paratrooper camos in the snow, feeding fish into wood-burning ovens in a windblown lean-to. We drank tequila in a cellar bar filled with Russian kids, a band playing phonetic English versions of ska, country-western, and blues standards. I bought the obligatory fur hat, then went ice fishing on the frozen Neva River, my two companions factory workers who came a few times a week to get away from their families. When I saw their catch – tiny whitebait-sized fish, which they said they gave to their cats – I got the idea that these guys weren’t there to catch the big one. When one of them cracked open a lunch box at eight o’clock in the morning and offered me a slug of vodka, I got the full picture.
‘Zamir,’ I said, ‘you’ve been dunking me in frozen lakes, involving me in reindeer killing, poisoning me with vodka. Let’s go someplace nice and eat some high-end stuff. Some fish eggs. Let’s dress up and go out for one last blowout.’
That night, we trudged through the snow and a vicious wind on Vasilevski Island (Saint Petersburg is made up of about 120 islands). It was dark and extremely cold.
Zamir and I stepped into the Russkya restaurant, a cavernous but cozy, rustically elegant space with wide wood floorboards, a plain plaster interior, dramatic ceilings, and a big brick and mortar oven in the dining room. A relaxed flathead in a tight jacket sat by the coat check, providing security, a suspicious-looking bulge under his left shoulder. We were greeted right away by a friendly host, who helped