Restaurant
Russia
6433 SE Foster
Road, 771-8873
Open
noon-3 pm and 5-10 pm Tuesday-Sunday.
Moderate: Entrees
hover around $10 a plate; a whole roasted baby pork (which
must be ordered in advance) weighs in at $59.50, but the
excellent beef Stroganov can be had for $8.50.
Picks:
super-salty meat platter appetizer; Olivier salad; mushroom
salad; borsch; beef Stroganov; steak Gorbachev; stuffed
blinchiki (crepes); medovik (honey cake); Stolichnaya, chilled
straight-up
Nice touch:
the sometimes-blunt honesty of the staff. When one of
my dining companions announced his intention to consume
a plate of hashed meats, our waiter crinkled his nose and
said, "It's not my favorite item on the menu, to tell you
the truth." He suggested the excellent steak Gorbachev instead.
P.J. O'Rourke, wise-ass foreign affairs reporter and token
Republican for Rolling Stone, once opined that Russians,
despite their culture's vaunted intellectual and artistic
triumphs, have to "boil rocks to make soup."
True enough, the Russian people have gotten one of history's
rawest raw deals. The economic and political misery of most
of their country's 1,100 years have at least one notable
by-product besides spectacular novels and ingrained fatalism:
crappy food.
Most of the food you run into in the old empire is, indeed,
frightful. But there's one thing about most Russians that
our dearly held stereotype of a dour, repressed nation doesn't
cover. Historical privation has given them a spiking sensuality
that spoiled Westerners can envy but not duplicate. When
they can cut loose, they do it right.
I was reminded of this ethos the first night I ate at Restaurant
Russia, a classy, inexpensive addition to Portland's ethno-munch
scene in the American Gothic Zone on Southeast Foster Road.
On a Friday night, an accordion-keyboard duo blasted Russian
folk classics. As a half-dozen tables of late-evening diners
looked on in awe and bemusement, two vixens in the latest
Moscow chic (hemlines are up again this spring!)
shook it sexy on the restaurant's small dance floor.
Suddenly, one of the waitresses chucked her notepad and
jumped into the frantic techno-frug. A song later, after
much gleeful throwing of hips and whipping of hair, she
returned to work. You just don't get this sort of thing
at Morton's.
At its best, Russian cooking reflects the same spirited
determination to harvest pleasure wherever possible. Restaurant
Russia's ingredients are humble--literally meat-and-potatoes--but
its cooks coax free the strongest, deepest flavors.
Appetizers, like a tray of sausages and cured cold cuts,
carry a sharp, salty sting. Meat tastes deeply and unapologetically
meaty. Desserts punch through the thick flavors of the main
course with the raw sweetness of honey and soothing heavy
cream. Stoli comes in elegant, tall shot glasses bathing
in bowls of ice. The waiter offers three red wine choices:
sweet, dry and very dry. The very dry is actually
quite sweet.
This is cooking as a direct expression of the People's
Will, diametrically opposed to the egoistic fusion gimcrackery
that too often holds sway in fancy-britches upscale joints.
The self-regarding inventors of PanAsian, Italo-Formosan,
Neo New Mexican and the 1,001 other Frankenstein styles
of the 21st-century restaurant could take a lesson.
Restaurant Russia is, simply, a rock-solid place to go
for rib-sticking, well-crafted food, and a salutory representative
of a much-dissed national cuisine. An atmosphere enlived
by goofy black lights, blaring music on weekends and witty
(if English-impaired) service is a bonus.
When you go, start with the piquant meat or fish platter,
or the black caviar if you can spring for it (at $35, this
smooth black gold comes dear, but the cheap red caviar may
prove too salty and fishy for delicate palates). Anyone
who digs Italian antipasto plates will feel at home with
these Russian equivalents, known as zakuski. Eating
zakuski without simultaneously drinking is either idiocy
or treason or both, so order a round of Stoli shots. Keep
in mind that the restaurant's policy is to serve no more
than four drinks to one patron.
Russian salads resemble ye olde potato salads of beer-drenched
picnic lore. The rich Olivier salad, a melange of ham, potato,
eggs, carrots, peas and pickles bound with mayonaise, is
the best of RR's selection, with the dense, walnut-studded
mushroom salad a close second.
Borsch, naturally, is Russia's signature dish, and Restaurant
Russia offers a particularly good rendition. Swimming with
dill and marbled with cream, the beet soup is hearty enough
to serve, along with an appetizer or salad, as a light dinner
in its own right.
Russians typically regard vegetarianism as a sort of mild
mental illness, and the entree list offers little comfort
to our veg-only comrades. Those who eschew red meat but
can stomach a little chicken or fish are in luck. The marinated
Cornish game hen absorbs a full 45 minutes of the kitchen's
attention. The salmon steak, though a little dry, is credible.
The Siberian pelmeni, or dumplings, taste like over-rich
potstickers at a front-operation Chinese place, and are
the only thing at Restaurant Russia that I wouldn't gladly
order again.
In meat, though, lies glory. The Russian masses, almost
always poor, preserve meat's age-old status as a luxurious
necessity. Restaurant Russia's take on beef Stroganov, that
dish named for the famed art-hoarding family, outstrips
the simple '50s housewife version most Americans are used
to by a considerable measure. The spicy, juicy steak Gorbachev--a
tender cut breaded and chicken-fried--is the best thing
in the house.
You wouldn't think a country beset by legendary hard winters
would harbor an obsession with ice cream, but Russians can't
get enough of it. Decked with berries, RR's dish of rich
vanilla makes a satisfyingly simple conclusion, though the
lighter, sharper medovik honey cake might better suit those
looking to escape the meal's heavy flavors. One order of
the hyper-decadent creme-stuffed crèpes, or blinchiki,
could easily serve two or three heavy forks.
With Russians and Russian-speaking ex-Soviets pouring into
Oregon, more Russian restaurants are sure to pop up around
town. I wouldn't be surprised if one surpassing this fine
outpost appears soon. And when Armenian and Georgian joints
slip into the mix, Portland diners will know that the Soviet
dream of world conquest isn't dead, only "repositioned,"
to cop a phrase from contemporary capitalism.
If Restaurant Russia is a sign of things to come, it's
hard to imagine a more pleasant conquest.
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Co-owners
Nadia 
