You can take a girl away from her pelmeni, but you can’t take the love for pelmeni out of the girl. On our last night in Madrid, my sister and I went to a Russian restaurant called El cosaco (The Cossack.) The restaurant turned out to be so popular that we practically had to beg for a table. We got it but only because we had arrived for dinner at the extremely early hour of 9:40 pm.
The restaurant turned out to be very cozy and cute with beautiful crockery:
The pelmeni were a little limp but still better than any I ever managed to make at home. The only thing that sucks worse than my pelmeni are my vareniki. (The Polish call them pierogi, but that is just bizarre.)
However, the “Olivier Salad”, which is the absolute staple of any festive occasion for the Russian speakers, was very good. I don’t have a photo because it was so good that I devoured it in under a minute. My personal recipe for the “Olivier Salad” is, of course, better but this one was still very good. N. loves this salad with such a passion that I suspect he might want to call our baby Olivier if it happens to be a boy.
While we were eating, we observed a very funny scene. A group of very unpleasant Spanish men in their 40s came into the restaurant. They represented the kind of madrileños who give a bad name to all Spaniards. Their permanent bad mood is called “la mala leche,” meaning milk that has turned sour. The expression is very apt because such people look like they have been drinking bad, stinking milk for years.
The men were unhappy with the table the Russian waitress assigned to them and started being nasty.
“If I have to be treated this way, I will just leave! I will leave! I am leaving right now!” one of them vociferated angrily, without making a slightest movement towards the door. “It is incredible that I should be asked to sit at this small, badly placed table. I! At this table! Incredible! Unconscionable! I am leaving! See me walk away right now!”
The Russian waitress, however, belonged to the generation of Soviet waitresses, which means that her life philosophy was, “The fewer clients I have, the less effort I have to make.” She didn’t even try to discuss anything with the unpleasant customers and just stood there, looking at them blankly and waiting for them to make good on their promise and clear out. She provided a really great touch of the typically Russian experience.
The impasse between the typically Spanish and the typically Russian brands of unpleasantness was hilarious. We didn’t see who got to win because a Spanish maitre d’ arrived and resolved the situation.
However, there was also a young Russian waitress – who looked like the perfect image of a Russian beauty – who belongs to the new generation and whose work was very professional. Here is the beautiful Russian tea in the traditional glass holder she brought us:
I totally need to buy these glass holders for home.
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