Russian Restaurant

Another Russian restaurant is also located at this former address and is known as Little Dream. Now, the new owner has simply named it Russian Restaurant.

Back in the 1960s, when Vietnam was a close ally of the Soviet Union, Russian was taught in all public schools in the country. It is a beautiful language but very difficult. Most textbooks teach basic conversations, some grammar, and a lot of vocabulary.

Every year, Vietnam sends thousands of students to Russia to study all major fields of engineering and economics so that they can return and together build a devastated country rising from the ashes of war.

Then, in the 1980s, many young people also joined government programs to train as workers in garment factories, steel mills and more.

After the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, many people returned home to Vietnam, but sometimes they feel deeply nostalgic for their youth spent in a far away country. They feel the need to eat the food of their youth to ease their nostalgia.

Born in such circumstances, the menu of Russian Restaurant contains most of the popular dishes from stolovaya, or the popular dishes found in the canteens of Russian universities.

Popular in a country where food is scarce, stolovaya dishes are often high in protein, saturated fat and carbs in potato dishes.

The Russian meal usually consists of soup, first course, second course and dessert. The popular soup is the popular borscht soup The ruby ​​red really warms diners, just as it did for cold-shattering Southeast Asian students who have traveled halfway around the world. to work or study in Russia.

For the first course, diners can choose to have two salads: a regular Russian salad or an Olivier salad. The name of the salad is reminiscent of a cold winter, with just a layer of oiled herring mixed with chopped onions under layers of boiled potatoes, carrots, beets mixed with mayonnaise, in that exact order, Finally covered with a layer of hard-boiled eggs.

For the second dish, diners can use sashlik. The grilled pork chops are marinated in a mixture of various dried herbs, including a few pinch of saffron, which smells great. There are two ways to marinate shashlik, one with Central Asian herbs that can be easily found at Russian grocery stores, the other with just salt, and then grilled.

If you don't want to use shashlik, you can try kotleti served with mashed potatoes.. Kotleti is made into meatballs rolled over breadcrumbs, then fried. In addition, a plate of cold meat served with pickled cucumbers or a bowl of powdered milk porridge are also favorite dishes of diners. Many diners often tell funny stories about Vietnamese students in the 1960s who were often very thin, but only by eating this porridge, they became fat in a short time.

Desserts of choice are Russian pancakes, or Blini with smetana.

The Russian restaurant is a cozy place where people who have spent some time enjoying Russian food can reminisce about their youth and go back to a time in their lives that they cherish.