Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat pelmeni
Small meat dumplings boiled in broth and served with sour cream, vinegar or butter. Urals and Siberian in origin, they hold broth inside, so the first bite deserves care.
Proper pelmeni are small; large ones are manti or vareniki. The table set is sour cream, black pepper and vinegar, and everyone chooses their own.
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Try borscht
A beetroot soup on beef stock with cabbage, served with sour cream and dark bread rubbed with garlic. A good borscht rests a day, and it is noticeably better on the second.
The colour should be deep ruby rather than brown: the beetroot goes in late and is acidified, or the colour fades. Garlic rolls called pampushki are the traditional side.
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Try herring under a fur coat
A layered salad of salt herring, potato, carrot, beetroot and mayonnaise, which turns the top a vivid burgundy. Mandatory at New Year and permanently on canteen menus.
It needs a night in the fridge for the layers to settle; freshly assembled it is dry. Its neighbour on the same table is Olivier salad, made with boiled sausage or chicken.
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Eat a cheburek
A large fried pastry of thin dough with juicy minced meat and broth inside. Crimean Tatar in origin, sold in cheburechnayas: places with no interior design and a queue.
The dough should blister and crackle and the broth should squirt, so hold it over a plate. Eat it with your hands immediately; cold it loses everything.
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Try khinkali
Georgian dumplings the size of a fist, filled with chopped meat and broth, with a thick topknot on top. Eaten by hand: bite the side, drink the broth, leave the knot on the plate.
The knots left on the plate are how you count what you ate, which is why they are not eaten. You order by the piece, usually five or more, and dust them with black pepper.
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Eat adjaruli khachapuri
A dough boat filled with molten cheese, a raw egg and a knob of butter, all stirred into the hot filling at the table. You tear off the ends of the boat and dip them; they are the cutlery.
Adjaruli has the egg, imeruli is round and closed, megruli has cheese on top as well. One boat is built for two.
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Try Uzbek plov
Rice cooked in a cauldron with lamb, carrot, cumin and a whole head of garlic, so that every grain stays separate. Real plov is made in large batches and sells out by evening.
It comes with achichuk, a tomato and onion salad, which cuts the fat. Go at lunchtime; what sits in the pot by evening has dried out.
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Have a cutlet with mash in a canteen
A minced patty bound with bread and milk, fried and served with mashed potato and gravy. The basic Soviet lunch, and in a serving-line canteen it costs very little.
Serving-line canteens run at lunch and close early, so go before three. The set meal of soup, a main and a fruit drink undercuts any café in the city.
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Try northern fish
Whitefish from Siberian rivers — muksun, nelma, chir — and northern halibut, all eaten more often in Moscow than where they are caught. Served lightly salted, as frozen shavings or grilled.
Stroganina is frozen fish shaved into ribbons and eaten still frozen with salt and pepper. Look for it in the food halls and fish counters.
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Grab pirozhki
Small baked or fried pies filled with cabbage, potato, meat, egg and spring onion, or apple. Street and station food, though the best come from bakeries and canteens that bake in batches.
Baked ones keep longer; fried ones are best within half an hour. The larger relative is rasstegai, a fish pie left open at the top so broth can be poured in.
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Try medovik honey cake Desserts and pastries
A layered cake of thin honey biscuit sheets with sour cream filling, which needs a night to soak. The most common dessert in Moscow cafés and the most reliable.
A good one has at least eight layers and cuts softly, without crunch. Its neighbours in the display are Napoleon and smetannik.
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Eat syrniki Desserts and pastries
Curd cheese fritters fried to a golden crust and served with sour cream, jam or condensed milk. A breakfast on the menu of almost every café in the city.
Good syrniki are tender and barely floured; dense rubbery ones mean overworked batter. They are made with dry curd rather than wet.
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Try ptichye moloko Desserts and pastries
A cake of airy agar soufflé under a thin chocolate shell, invented in a Moscow restaurant in the 1970s. The first Soviet dessert to be granted a patent.
The soufflé should be springy and light, set with agar rather than gelatine and cream. It is sold both as a cake and as individual sweets.
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Drink mors Non-alcoholic drinks
A cold drink of crushed cranberries or lingonberries with water and sugar, sour rather than sweet. The standard non-alcoholic order in any Russian restaurant.
Homemade mors is cloudy with pulp at the bottom and needs a stir. Its menu neighbour is kompot, made from dried fruit, warmer and sweeter.
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Try kvas Non-alcoholic drinks
A lightly fizzy fermented drink made from rye bread, sweet-sour and barely alcoholic. In summer it is poured from street barrels, which is a seasonal ritual of its own.
Kvas is also the base of okroshka, a cold summer soup worth trying in the heat. Barrel kvas is live and slightly cloudy; the bottled kind is often just flavoured soda.
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Try Russian infusions Local alcohol
Strong infusions made with berries, horseradish, honey or pine nuts, produced in-house by Moscow bars and served chilled in small carafes. They are drunk with food rather than alone.
The classic tasting set is cranberry, horseradish and honey. Pickles, cured pork fat or herring come alongside; here the snack is not optional.
