Food on board the Trans Siberian

Restaurant car quality is variable. Sometimes the staff are graduates of the Soviet School of Inhospitality majoring in surliness, indifference and awful food while other times they're really sweet and dish up tasty food. Food and service improves dramatically in the Chinese restaurant cars.

Dining Car view	Dining Car view	Dining Car view Chinese

Some trains have cabin takeaways	Bread Spread	Lingering long lunch Russian car

Mongolian Dining Car

The train runs on Moscow time, outside it's local time but the restaurant cars seem to have another time zone so check meal times.

Passengers usually cater for themselves with the ever-boiling samovar at the carriage end providing hot water for drinks and pot noodles. Most stops have platform hawkers clamouring to sell fresh bread, fruit, vegetables, hard boiled eggs, tins of sardines, instant noodles, bottles of home made vodka, dried fish, toys and clothes. Platform kiosks provide the rest; forget the old images of Soviet-time queues and empty shelves, these are well stocked especially with varieties of beer.

Tea Coffee Vodka you name it - after 6 drinkies	Breakfast foraged from station hawkers and the train samovar	Typical station food hawkers

General Food Notes

The traditions of modern Russian cuisines are closely connected with the food that peasants cooked already in the Russian Empire. Basic dishes haven't changed. Certainly, nowadays, when people are in hurry and don't have enough time to cook at home, they prefer fast food, cafe food, etc. Nevertheless, food and beverages that are served at home are almost the same as they were several hundred years ago. Russian people are very hospitable, and you can make sure of it when you travel Russia food and beverages are in abundance, especially, during holidays and festivals in Russia.

Usually, there are three main meal times: breakfast, dinner, and supper. Main courses are served at dinner and supper. They include, first of all soups, and it's impossible to imagine a Russian dinner without them. There are different types of them: “shchi” (cabbages whit meat), “rassolnik” (hot soup of pickled cucumbers), “ukha” (boiled fish), “okroshka” (the ingredients aren't boiled but put in kvas or sour milk; it is usually cooked in summer), “kasha” (porridge) it's prepared from any grain (buckwheat, rice, wheat).

Most soups are served with “smetana” (sour cream). Though Russia is a huge country, these soups can be easily found almost in any corner and whenever you travel Russia. Other popular dishes are from meat (sausages, pelmeni, chops, steak), from potato, and there also exist different salads from vegetables and fruits. One should never forget that most food is served with bread that is the most essential thing in Russian cuisine.

In Russia, people drink tea and coffee with pleasure as other nations do; among traditional alcoholic free beverages are prostokvasha, kvas, kompot (stewed fruit); among alcoholic drinks, vodka and samogon lead. Traditional beer in Russia is a bit sour.