A Cook's Tour_ In Search of the Perfect Meal - Anthony Bourdain [49]
‘Homemade mustard seed and horseradish vodka,’ I was informed. The greenish liquid was ‘cucumber juice,’ essentially pickle brine. The idea was to down a shot of the spicy, throat-burning vodka, then chase it immediately with a glass of brine. Sounds pretty loathsome, right? And either element alone would indeed have been troublesome. But in correct order, the searing neutral spirits followed by cooling and oddly mellowing brine was delicious, sort of like my earlier experience at the banya: sweating and burning, followed by dunking and freezing. Together, somehow, it works.
We sat down and had a few more of these ‘one-two punch’ concoctions and some bread. Our waitress, a cute but unusually assertive young woman, seemed to materialize regularly with more of the stuff. ‘Don’t vorry,’ she said, ‘I am strong. If you get drunk, I can carry you home.’ She was fairly petite, but I believed her.
Now, I famously hate salad bars. I don’t like buffets (unless I’m standing on the serving side: buffets are like free money for cost-conscious chefs). When I see food sitting out, exposed to the elements, I see food dying. I see a big open petri dish that every passing serial sneezer can feel free to drool on and fondle with spittle-flecked fingers. I see food not held at ideal temperature, food rotated (or not) by person or persons unknown, left to fester in the open air unprotected from the passing fancies of the general public. Those New York delis with the giant salad bars where all the health-conscious office workers go for their light, sensible lunches? You’re eating more bacteria than the guy standing outside eating mystery meat on a stick. I remember my own words when designing buffets at a large club: ‘Fill ’em up on free salads and bread, so they go light on the shrimp.’
Russkya’s first-course salad bar, however, was not bad. It helped that the restaurant was empty and the food looked fresh. A long white table was covered with goodies: pashket (a liver pâté), grechnevaya kasha (buckwheat groats with mushrooms and onions), pickled beets, smoked fish, pickled herring, potato salad, potato latkes, and shaved paper-thin slices of chilled, uncooked pork fat. It was the perfect accompaniment to the early stages of what I was beginning to understand would be a marathon vodka-drinking session. A full bottle of Russian Standard had already hit our table when Zamir and I returned from the buffet, and our waitress, watching us like a severe schoolmarm, seemed hell-bent on seeing us both carried out on stretchers.
Two huge plates loaded with osetra caviar and the traditional garnishes arrived at our table. We eyed the big mound of gray-black fish eggs, lemon wedges, separated hard-cooked egg yolks and whites, finely chopped onion, sour cream and chives, and a warm stack of fluffy, perfectly cooked buckwheat blinis. Then I dug in, not messing about with garnishes, shoveling about half an ounce into my mouth in one bite. The blinis were perfect, the little eggs bursting between my teeth.
‘She says there is a problem with our table,’ said Zamir, our waitress standing at his shoulder with a grave expression on her face. ‘Our waitress says we are not drinking enough vodka. She is concerned.’
I searched my waitress’s face, trying to find a hint of a smile. Was she kidding? I didn’t know.
Try to imagine this happening in an American restaurant or bar. Your waiter comes to your table and says he doesn’t think you are consuming enough booze, that you need more alcohol, and you need to consume it quickly. Our highways would be demolition derbies of colliding muscle cars overloaded with drunken frat boys, senseless Yuppies, and out-of-control secretaries stoked on spritzers and woo-woos. In Russia, though, this is apparently normal. At the time of their deaths, three out of five Russian men, I am told, are found to have a blood-alcohol level exceeding what one needs to qualify for a DWI. That doesn’t mean the booze