What to eat in Moscow
Moscow food as it is: dumplings and layered herring salad, market halls with khinkali and khachapuri, chebureki, Uzbek plov and fish from the north.

[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] 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.
[ ] Try medovik honey cake
    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.
[ ] Eat syrniki
    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.
[ ] Try ptichye moloko
    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.
[ ] Drink mors
    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.
[ ] Try kvas
    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.
[ ] Try Russian infusions
    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.

Checklist from Unload: https://unloads.me/c/food-moscow