Naveed Ahmad Khan
Two major national gastronomic events have kicked off simultaneously in more than 50 cities: the milestone 10th Russian Restaurant Festival and the “New Names” festival, which showcases the most interesting restaurant projects to have emerged in the country over the past year and a half.
Until October 25, the country’s best restaurants will offer special set menus featuring their signature dishes. The list of participants and festival menus is available at foodfestival.ru, and participating restaurants are marked on the 2GIS map.
Discover Russia, the national tourism brand, has become a new partner for the festivals and has selected 23 set menus that best reflect the culture and cuisine of Russia’s regions.
“Supporting the Russian Restaurant Festival is a logical extension of our existing projects. Through ingredients, dishes and the stories behind them, the Discover Russia sets will showcase the unique characteristics of Russia’s regions. For Discover Russia, this partnership represents a continuation of our work in gastronomic tourism. The brand previously supported the release of the Wine Atlas of Russia, launched the international gastronomic project ‘From Russia with Taste’ in collaboration with Alexander Sysoev, and will soon unveil the ‘Tourism Atlas of Russia: Enogastronomic Routes’ project,” noted Dmitry Smolnikov, Deputy CEO of CSR.
The “Classic” track includes Dr. Zhivago in Moscow, Benois Farm in St. Petersburg, Korabl in the Moscow region, Sosedi in the Sverdlovsk region, Modus Olympic Park in the Sirius Federal Territory, #SibirSibir in the Novosibirsk region, Khozyain Taigi in the Krasnoyarsk Territory, Partizan in the Irkutsk region, Kedr in Tatarstan, Hound in the Perm Territory, Ulysses in Primorye, Yaga in the Rostov region, Moryana in the Kaliningrad region, the Anrov café-bakery in the Arkhangelsk region, Printsip in the Tyumen region, Marco Polo in Bashkortostan, the Tsarskoye Selo Russian cuisine restaurant in the Kirov region, Mosty in the Yaroslavl region and Igristy in the Tver region.
In the “New Names” category, Discover Russia recognized four projects: Shelest in the Krasnodar Territory, Sibirskie Ogni in the Nizhny Novgorod region, Ryabinin Manor in the Chelyabinsk region and Yuzhanin in the Samara region.
For this anniversary year, the festival program will extend beyond the restaurants themselves. Special screenings of films about gastronomy and the people of the restaurant industry will take place at the Moskva cinema in Moscow, Michele in St. Petersburg and the Mesto film club in Kazan. Bookstores such as Podpisnye Izdaniya in Moscow and St. Petersburg, Piotrovsky in Yekaterinburg and Charlie in Krasnodar, as well as the Gorky City Library in Krasnoyarsk, will feature curated collections of books on food, restaurants, chefs and gastronomic culture.
“Over the years, many of the concepts we devised have become a standard part of the restaurant industry, and dozens of local festivals and a vast number of new projects have emerged. That is why, for this milestone edition of the Russian Restaurant Festival (RRF), we want to create something of an encyclopedia of the past decade while simultaneously showcasing the incredible diversity of Russia’s culinary landscape,” said Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian Restaurant Festival.
This year, restaurants were invited to curate tasting menus featuring four signature dishes introduced over the last ten years. Participants enhanced these offerings with local produce, seasonal ingredients, unique presentation styles and the culinary stories of their respective cities. The fixed prices for these sets are 2,026, 3,026 or 4,026 rubles.
