Bizarre Russian Food

Blini with caviar and sour cream

Cruel prank idea: Tell your American friend it’s whipped cream and jam and watch them experience the most intense sensory bafflement of their lives.

Herring Under Fur Coat

Imagine a cake layered with salted herring, cooked vegetables, and a coat of grated beets and mayo. It sounds gross but it’ll grow on you, just like an actual fuchsia fur coat might.

Varenyky

You can fill them with anything, but fruit is common. Fruit dumpling!

Vinaigrette

Beets, potatoes, pickles, and pickled cabbage are the vegetables used most frequently in Russian cuisine, so it’s no real surprise that they have a super healthy dish of their own.

Olivye salad

It’ll probably freak non-Russians out a little, but really, it’s just potato salad if it was jacked up on more veggies, mayo, and the aforementioned bologna. Looks foul, tastes incredible.

Kissel

“Fruit soup” made from fruit juice and starch and commonly served as a dessert. In case you weren’t sure yet, soup is kind of a big deal.

Solyanka

Every type of meat + every type of sour thing = soup?

Okroshka

It’s cold kefir with cucumbers, bologna, and dill — it’s like all the ingredients rejected from soup in the past got together and decided to puzzle us all.

Kholodets

MEAT JELLO. The concept never feels completely normal, but it’s delish and fun to play around with! And look at all the shapes you can make!

Kompot

This one’s basically Eastern Europe’s version of fruit punch, except that it’s made by boiling fruits in water, which just seems like a more complicated way of going about the whole thing, but is totally worth it.