We've been eating pretty authentic while we've been here. To be honest, we weren't given much of a choice - our first night we had those strange salty pies with sweet pastry, and it's continued on from there. Most times we've been the only non-Russian speakers in the place, pointing and smiling trying to order - it's been pretty exciting :)
A cafe here means something different to what it means in Australia. It's the kind of place where you'll get a full meal out of a bain-marie - from what's on display, you choose a meat, a side and a salad, and they weigh your plate after adding each one and charge you based on the amount of each that you're eating. It's kind of strange at first, but you get used to it, and I'm quite a fan of the concept now. The only trick is to make sure that they weigh your plate first - we found that some of them were trying to rip us off by including the weight of the plate as part of the weight of your meat, so your meal ends up costing twice as much as it should.
The salads have ranged from your standard Greek salad in the more touristy place to a "Russian salad" made of tomato, cucumber, egg, potato and carrot drenched in sour cream, to a beetroot salad which was pretty much just beetroot (which isn't as sweet as in Australia) with egg and sour cream. For sides, we've generally eaten potatoes, which have been absolutely delicious although incredibly unhealthy - drenched in oil. For meats, there have been strange rissole-type things, shish kebabs, and tasty schniztel. One time I chose something that looked like a mound of potatoes, which was delicious until I found the herring hidden underneath. :)
One of the things that we've had a tough time with so far in Russia has been finding a supermarket - we need to stock up on snacks and dinners for the upcoming 4 day train trip, so we've been on the prowl. We found a lot of corner store type places, but everything there is hidden behind the counter so without any Russian language skills, it's hard to get what you want. Today we journeyed out to what the Lonely Planet website recommended was a good supermarket, only to find that it was tiny - pretty much what you'd find in a convenience store in Australia, with more fresh food. We were a bit disappointed, but we bought what was there, and thought that maybe in Russia people don't have American-style supermarkets - maybe they just buy from convenience stores and fresh food markets. We couldn't give up though, and we ended up stalking reverse-following the trail of people near our hotel who were coming from somewhere with bags full of shopping. We walked through the entire 3-level shopping centre with no luck, before seeing someone come out of a tiny little door outside the shopping centre that looked like it led to a bathroom - lo and behold, once we entered, it turned out to be pretty much a giant Woolworths, selling everything! Needless to say, we're heading back tomorrow to stock up on the rest of the stuff that we couldn't get at the bizarre tiny supermarket on the other side of town. The best part was that 0.5L of beer (Baltika - good local beer) cost us 20R - about 60c Australian. Amazing :)
Rumour is that while we're on the 4 day train trip, we can jump off at the stops and buy potatoes, pies and other snack food from people on the train station - I'm really hoping that's right, because I'm not looking forward to 4 days of 2 minute noodles.
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