Fresh and Ethnic and New

I love to discover new places for food, for eats, for shopping for food…I don’t know why I look so mean in this photo…I’m actually a pretty happy girl.

One of my favorite places to go is Brighton Beach.  As much as I love to go out to eat … my favorite thing to do in Brighton Beach is to shop for food and prepare it at home. 

 I speak Russian so it makes it that much easier and way more fun, but I recently took a bunch of my non-Russian friends on a little excursion through the mad world of Russian Food Shopping in New York. 

 We walked around a lot, stopped for some Peerozhki on the street.  The street vendors sell amazing little pastries, stuffed with cherries, apples, puppy seed, mushrooms, potato, pork, etc…its so good.  I get one every time I’m there.

It was Russian New Years (January 13th) so we stopped into a couple stores for some party supplies:  smoked sausages, pickles, dumplings, bread, herring – very important, salads, katlety, pirogy – actually sweet cakes, blini, pickled sauerkraut, and of course - Vodka.  There are two great Bazaars on the main strip.  You can get anything you want already prepared, hot and ready to eat, buffet style to go.

To make it just a little more fancy, it was a celebration after all  – we picked up a huge box of red caviar.  Weeks before that my brother and I found a crazy little place that sells amazing, fresh, delicious caviar for a very, very low price.

 We browsed a few book stores, took in the scenery and the Russian Language spoken all around.  It was fun. Back home we all went to eat and drink.  It was fun to share this with my friends, to guide them a bit through the new tastes they were experiencing…they like it a lot and we all had a great time.