How to develop your gastronomic taste?

Restaurant professionals often complain that the recent past of our country adversely affected the taste preferences of Russians. Soviet cuisine can be safely called a black gastronomic stain, even despite the fact that it brought to everyday life recipes for now such popular dishes as a Kiev patty, beef stroganoff, Leningrad pickle and many others. The creation of such a cuisine was triggered by the policy of slogans from the series “Public catering to the masses”, the post-war economic crisis and for a number of other reasons. But it was not always like that. Russia, at the crossroads of the continents, for centuries absorbed the food culture of its neighbors and enemies: the French, Nords, Asians. But because of the Soviet sausage and canning tinsel, it is sometimes very difficult for restaurant guests to switch to something “less understandable”, because the canceled “taste of childhood” has not been canceled.

The same French have their own gastronomic features. Firstly, the lexical vocabulary of gastronomy in their language tends to infinity, trying to convey all the shades of taste as accurately as possible with words. Secondly, food is not just eating, it is a whole philosophy called savoirvivre (translated from French, “know how to live”), which regularly appears on the pages of the media in a rather voluminous column of the same name. Continue reading →