What to eat in Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg does not eat like Moscow: smelt in May, plain sugared doughnuts, shaverma, Baltic fish, third-wave coffee and old stand-up bars.

[ ] Try smelt in season
    A small fish that runs in May and smells of fresh cucumber — not a metaphor, the smell really is cucumber. It is floured, fried whole and eaten with your hands, bones and all.
[ ] Eat pyshki
    Rings of fried dough dusted with icing sugar, eaten with milky coffee poured from an urn. They differ from Moscow doughnuts: the dough is less sweet, and the setting is a Soviet-era shop with aluminium trays.
[ ] Try shaverma
    Meat from a vertical grill wrapped in flatbread with vegetables and sauce. The local spelling and the local school differ from Moscow's: the filling is drier and the wrap is always pressed and toasted.
[ ] Try Baltic fish
    Baltic sprat, herring and pike-perch: the fish the city smokes, salts and fries all year. Hot-smoked sprat is sold at markets while it is still warm.
[ ] Try ukha fish soup
    A clear fish soup made from several kinds of fish, with nothing fried and nothing thickened — that is what separates it from a European fish soup. Served with vodka and dark bread.
[ ] Try Pozharsky cutlets
    Chopped chicken cutlets in a crust of bread cubes, crisp outside and very juicy inside. Invented at a coaching inn on the road between the two capitals and adopted into the imperial kitchen.
[ ] Eat pelmeni in a pelmennaya
    Small dumplings with sour cream and vinegar in a place that serves almost nothing else. The Soviet pelmennaya format survives better here than anywhere else.
[ ] Try blini
    Thin pancakes with caviar, cured salmon, sour cream or jam. In a blinnaya they are cooked in front of you on a large griddle, a canteen genre of its own.
[ ] Try stroganina or lightly cured fish
    Frozen northern fish shaved into ribbons and eaten still frozen with salt and pepper, or lightly cured muksun and halibut in slices. The northern catch arrives here all year.
[ ] Have a sprat sandwich
    Spiced Baltic sprat on a slice of dark bread with butter and boiled egg — the classic ryumochnaya snack. As simple as it gets and entirely local.
[ ] Try a Sever pastry
    Soviet pastries — the crumb-and-cocoa kartoshka, a tartlet with meringue cream, an éclair — from confectioners that have run since the middle of the last century. The taste is exactly as remembered.
[ ] Try medovik or smetannik
    Layered cakes bound with sour cream, sold by the slice in any café. Medovik uses honey layers, smetannik sour cream ones, and both should be moist rather than dry.
[ ] Drink locally roasted coffee
    The city has dozens of its own roasteries and three-table cafés that change beans by season. Ask what is on filter today; it is usually the best thing on the menu.
[ ] Drink mors or ivan-chai
    Cranberry mors and ivan-chai, a fermented drink made from fireweed that brews like tea but carries no caffeine. Both appear in almost any Russian-food restaurant.
[ ] Visit a ryumochnaya
    A stand-up bar serving berry, horseradish and herb infusions, sprat sandwiches and prices from another century. You stop in for one glass on your way somewhere, not for the evening.

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