What I ate on vacation: Part II: Offshore Eats

The other posts in this series:
Part I: Cruise Food (Aboard the Emerald Princess).
Part III: Eating Copenhagen

Continuing with my series on what I ate during my trip around the Baltics (see Part I for what I ate on the Emerald Princess), we move onto what I found in two of the stops on our cruise: St. Petersburg, Russia and Rostock, Germany.

The Emerald Princess actually docked in the harbor near St. Petersburg, so we actually had two full days to explore the city (most of the other stops were only a day or half a day in port). We decided to take advantage of this by signing up for a tour that spanned two full days. Included in the package was a two traditional Russian lunches, but the funny thing was, the menus for both the lunches were virtually the same! (excepting the soup and main entree). I guess the food that was served was what Russians consider to be the most representative of their traditional cuisine. I’ll mainly post about what we ate on the first day:

Walking in, we were greeted by a boisterous trio that played traditional Russian folk music for us while we dined; tables were lined up row by row to accomodate all the cruise passengers (I suspect this restaurant caters exclusively to the local tour agencies) and we all sat down for a multi-course lunch.

Our beverages: water, champagne and a shot of vodka.

We started with a salad of tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce and dill; as an American who is tired of seeing salads in restaurants overly dressed with gloppy dressing or oily vinaigrettes, this rather dry salad was a welcome change. The herbal and refreshing flavor of the dill was what the salad relied on to give it its “punch,” and made for a very light start for our meal.

Two kinds of breads were served, a lighter, fluffy white bread as well as a sourer, dense rye-type bread. As a fan of dark, whole-grain breads, I really enjoyed eating this topped with a thin smear of butter.

Blini? (If someone can confirm this for me, that’d be great), a sort of savory pancake topped with some kind of sour-creamish dairy product and caviar. This probably was my favorite course as the pancake was light and fluffy, crispy on the edges and had a hint of creaminess in the middle. The saltiness of the caviar (I couldn’t help but think about ikura (Japanese salmon roe) the entire time I was eating this; it tasted exactly the same!) and the sourness of the cream really brought this dish together.

A vegetable soup was next:

Nothing much to say about this soup. I don’t think there was any cream, as the taste was not heavy or oily; it was probably the base of pureed veg that nadded body to the soup.

Our main course was some sort of chicken stew with vegetables with boiled rice; sadly this paled in comparison to the starters; the entree on the second day was a bit better (a piece of white fish with a cream-based dill sauce, vegetables and buttered mashed potatoes).

Dessert was a sort of berry-topped cake, served with a splash of cold milk. I happened to really like this; the berries were sour and the cake was dense and bit soggy from sitting in the milk (I’m one of those people that enjoys dipping bread or cake in milk; my mom can’t understand this quirk of mine), but other diners didn’t seem like it so much.

Overall, a good intro to Russian cuisine. Come to think of it, it’s probably the first time I’ve ever really had Russian food before; it’s difficult to find any restaurants in California that serve Russian fare, therefore, I can’t really speak for how authentic this was. It was a good learning experience nonetheless.

We were able to get some free time when we stopped in Germany; from our port at Warnemünde we hopped on a train to the nearby city of Rostock. By the main pedestrian thoroughfare, we found a farmer’s market:

Looking around, we were surrounded by carts and carts of vendors selling sausages and hot dogs; it seems as though everytime you turned a corner, there’d be another cart selling all kinds of wurst. By lunchtime, my sister and I were determined to try one as the smell of the sausages cooking was quite heavenly (this is saying a lot as I normally don’t eat meat on a day-to-day basis). We picked up a “Rostocken Bockwurst” just cause it had the city’s name in it, not really knowing what it was, but it turned out to be a good choice. Served with a fat dollop of ketchup and homemade mustard and a slice of toast (brot!), this was good, simple street food at its finest.

We couldn’t help getting a side order of fries, which the vendor dusted with a bunch of paprika and salt. He had a hell of a time understanding us as we didn’t speak German and he didn’t speak English so we both spent a lot of time making exaggerated facial expressions and waving our arms. And we spent about $2 for lunch between the two of us . . . probably the cheapest lunch we’d ever find while in Europe.

Later on in the day, we strolled along the pier in Warnemünde and picked up a few snacks to enjoy when we got back on the ship:

Super danish! A delicious cream cheese and berry pastry. Heart attack in a wax bag but really good.

I couldn’t help but buy this cute petit four. This was also really delicious: marzipan-based cake with chocolate ganache and pastry cream layers, topped with a poured fondant.