What to eat in Moscow: Russian dishes, food halls and historic cafés

Moscow's dining table brings together centuries of Old Muscovite merchant cooking, nineteenth-century Franco-Russian noble cuisine, and regional dishes from across the Urals, Siberia, and the Caucasus. Historians of Russian food divide the tradition into Old Russian grain and pie baking, seventeenth-century Old Moscow merchant banquets, and the nineteenth-century Petersburg and Moscow restaurant synthesis. Across historic boulevard restaurants in Presnya and modern domed market halls, five classic dishes anchor menus throughout the capital.

Beetroot borscht, shchi, and summer okroshka

Hot soup forms the traditional opening course of a midday or evening meal in Moscow. The best-known bowl is red beetroot borscht, simmered from beef bone stock, sautéed beetroot, white cabbage, carrots, potatoes, onions, and tomatoes, then served with a generous spoonful of thick smetana (sour cream), chopped fresh dill, dark Borodinsky rye bread, garlic cloves, or thinly sliced salo (cured pork fat). Equally deeply rooted in central Russia is shchi, a slow-simmered cabbage soup made with either fresh cabbage in summer or tangy fermented sauerkraut in winter, often baked under a golden pastry lid in a clay pot alongside buckwheat kasha. During warm July afternoons, menus add okroshka, a chilled soup of diced root vegetables, crisp cucumbers, spring onions, dill, boiled egg, and meat dressed in either tangy fermented rye kvass or kefir.

Pelmeni, beef Stroganoff, blini, and syrniki

• Pelmeni (Siberian meat dumplings): Borrowed into Russian cuisine from the Komi and Udmurt traditions during the expansion across the Ural Mountains and Siberia, pelmeni wrap a finely minced filling of beef, pork, and crushed ice water inside thin unleavened flour-and-egg dough so that the melting ice creates a savoury broth inside each parcel. Boiled in salted water or clear stock, they arrive steaming with melted butter, smetana, or a splash of table vinegar and cracked black pepper.
• Beef Stroganoff (Befstroganov): Named in the nineteenth century after a member of the noble Stroganov family and recorded in Elena Molokhovets's classic cookbook A Gift to Young Housewives, this dish sautés tender strips of beef fillet with onions and mushrooms in a velvety sauce of smetana and mustard, served alongside mashed potatoes or crisp shoestring potatoes.
• Blini and oladyi (Russian pancakes): Thin yeast-raised wheat or buckwheat pancakes (blini) are served year-round and take centre stage during the late-winter Maslenitsa festival, folded around red salmon roe, lightly salted herring, sautéed forest mushrooms, sour cream, or sweet berry jam. Smaller, thicker pan-baked pancakes are known as oladyi, while rolled filled pancakes sautéed in butter are called blinchiki.
• Syrniki (curd-cheese pancakes): A staple of Moscow café breakfasts also called tvorozhniki, syrniki mix creamy tvorog (soft farmer's curd cheese) with egg, flour, sugar, and vanilla before shallow-frying in hot butter until golden brown outside and creamy inside, plated with berry preserves and sour cream.

Food halls, markets, and historic dining rooms

To sample multiple regional kitchens under one roof, ride the Metro one stop south of the Garden Ring to Tulskaya station for Danilovsky Market (74 Mytnaya Street), whose fluted concrete dome shelters farm honey, pickled vegetables, and a central ring of regional kitchen counters. Closer to the centre, Central Market on Rozhdestvensky Boulevard (near Trubnaya Metro) and the restored Miussky tram-depot food hall Depo Moscow on Lesnaya Street (near Belorusskaya Metro) offer casual lunch counters. On Tverskaya Street at No. 14 stands the historic 1901 Neo-Baroque interior of the former Yeliseyevsky food hall, while for self-service Russian classics right on Red Square, Stolovaya No. 57 on the top floor of GUM serves trays of borscht, cutlets, and fruit compote.