Only one in four Belarusian cafes offers 10 local dishes

"Every public catering object will have a Belarusian cuisine page on their menu. It will contain 10 Belarusian dishes that foreign guests could taste,” BelTA quotes the promises made by head of the trade and services department of Minsk City Executive Committee Nina Yemyalyanava before the hockey championship.

No Belarusian dishes are offered at the restaurant Dolce Vita in the 5-star hotel Crown Plaza.

“We only have Italian dishes,” the waitresses told Euroradio sorrowfully. But you can order a seafood soup for 200 thousands or a risotto for 150 thousands there.

However, Euroradio found kalduny for Br104 thousand in the hotel lobby. That was it.

“We have a duck roll, cold baked pork, beef,  potatoes with herring, assorted forest mushroom and  a village snack – with homemade sausage,” President-Hotel listed their Belarusian dishes. One of the Belarusian dishes was… meat with tuna sauce. Why not?

There is nothing Belarusian is such restaurants as Falcone and Singing Fountains either. No wonder:

“We only specialize in Italian cuisine,” they replied when I tried to order a dinner.

We headed for less luxurious places. The cafe Perchyk in Karl Marx Street offers draniki and kalduny for 50 and 70 thousands respectively.

There are more than 10 Belarusian dishes in Grunewald: jellied minced meat, cep soup, baked tongue and even Krambambulya.

“We have verashchaka, machanka and jugged hare with sour cream,” the café listed their Belarusian dishes.

You may spend about 100 thousands here in the afternoon and about 300 thousands (with drinks) in the evening.

Only 2 out of 8 cafes we visited could offer over 10 Belarusian dishes.

The official chef of the hockey championship was chosen during the special project Chef prepared by the Belarusian State Broadcasting Company three years ago. But no one knows where that chef is now!

“I have never heard about it before. Maybe they organized their own contest,” a representative of the championship Directorate told Euroradio. As far as we know, that chef is working somewhere in Moscow now.

“No one should force cafes and restaurants to serve Belarusian dishes. It will look strange in an Italian or Japanese restaurant. They just need to increase the number of Belarusian cuisine restaurants. And it should not be done only for the championship. 10 dishes is not many either,” author of the book Our Food Ales Bely said.

He suggested his menu of 10 Belarusian dishes for cafes: cold borscht, cepelinai, zrazy, kalduny, potato sausage, verashchaka, cabbage rolls, vantrabyanka, stuffed pike and buckwheat pancakes.

The World Ice Hockey Championship will be held in Minsk on May 9-25. Besides Belarusian dishes, free wi-fi has been promised in all cafes.

Photo: ladymilk.ru