6 Russian Dishes in Saint Petersburg You Have to Try — Borscht, Blini, Pelmeni, and Beef Stroganoff

Russian food rarely gets its due as a destination in itself — but anyone who has eaten the real thing in Saint Petersburg will think differently. A pot of borscht simmered overnight, paper-thin crispy blini with roe, and tender pelmeni floating in clear broth tell you more about the country's history than most books will. Worth knowing before you order: most dishes are built around meat. Vegetarians should flag it with the restaurant before choosing.

#1

📍 Every Russian restaurant in the city, especially along Nevsky Prospekt

Borscht

This beet soup has represented Slavic cooking for over a thousand years and was added to UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022. The Russian version simmers beetroot with cabbage, onion, carrot, potato, and beef or pork for several hours until the broth turns a deep, fragrant red. It arrives hot with sour cream and black bread, and the flavour is more layered than you'd expect — sour, a little sweet, and rounded all at once.

Best time Lunch or dinner, year-round — though a hot bowl in the middle of winter feels especially worthwhile.

How to get there Available at every Russian restaurant in the city. Nevsky Prospekt has a good spread of places, from casual to mid-range.

Travel tips

• Always order extra smetana (Russian sour cream) on the side. Stir it into the soup and it lifts the whole thing to another level of richness.
• Cold borscht (or okroshka) is a completely different summer version. Order both to compare.
• Prices run 200–400 roubles a bowl at a local place; tourist-facing restaurants often charge two to three times that.

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#2

📍 General restaurants and blinnaya pancake shops throughout the city

Blini

One of the oldest dishes in Slavic cooking, predating Christianity and tied closely to the Maslenitsa festival (Russia's carnival week). The batter — wheat or buckwheat — is made extremely thin and cooked in butter. Blini work equally well sweet (with jam or honey) or savoury (with smoked salmon, red caviar, or cream cheese), which makes them viable any time from breakfast through a late-night snack.

Best time Breakfast or a snack — blinnaya shops in the city centre serve them across all meals.

How to get there Blini shops are everywhere, especially around Nevsky Prospekt and Sennaya Market.

Travel tips

• Try blini with red caviar (ikra) — it costs a fraction of black caviar, tastes excellent, and is one of the most authentically Russian things you can eat here.
• Teremok is a Russian fast-food chain with reliably good, cheap blini, including inside metro stations across the city.
• Buckwheat blini have a nuttier, more complex flavour than wheat. Ask your server if they have the option.

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#3

📍 Russian restaurants across the city and specialist pelmennaya shops

Pelmeni

Russian dumplings filled with beef, pork, or a mix, wrapped in thin soft dough and boiled. The original recipe comes from Siberia, where families would make large batches and freeze them outdoors through the long winter. Pelmeni can be served boiled in broth, pan-fried, or baked — typically with sour cream, vinegar, or melted butter. Simple but filling, they're the kind of comfort food that makes sense in any season.

Best time Lunch or dinner, year-round — filling and warming, especially in winter.

How to get there Specialist pelmennaya shops are scattered across the city; the areas around Sennaya Ploshchad and Vladimirskaya have several good ones.

Travel tips

• Order s maslom (with butter) or so smetanoy (with sour cream) — both are excellent in different ways.
• A plate at a local place runs 300–600 roubles. Far better value than tourist-facing restaurants.
• If you're not sure where to go, ask your hotel to point you toward a nearby pelmennaya that locals actually use.

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#4

📍 Mid-to-upper-range Russian restaurants, especially along Nevsky Prospekt

Beef Stroganoff

Russia's most internationally known dish — and one that originated right here in Saint Petersburg in the 19th century, named after the aristocratic Stroganov family. The original recipe uses thin-cut beef sautéed with onion and mushrooms in a sour cream and mustard sauce. The result is rich and creamy with a depth of flavour that sets it apart from generic meat-in-sauce dishes. It comes with mashed potatoes or noodles, and eating it here, in its city of origin, is its own small piece of history.

Best time Dinner. Russian mid-range restaurants typically open noon to 11 pm.

How to get there Multiple Russian restaurants along Nevsky Prospekt and in the side streets around Rubinshteina Street, which is the city's most food-focused dining strip.

Travel tips

• Choose a restaurant that cuts and sears fresh beef to order rather than using pre-frozen meat. The difference in quality is significant.
• Order it with kartofelnoe pyure (mashed potato) — the traditional pairing — rather than pasta, which is a modern variation.
• Expect to pay 600–1,200 roubles at a mid-range restaurant. If prices are much lower than that, the beef quality is worth questioning.

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#5

📍 Bakeries and street stalls across the city, all metro station lines

Pirozhki

Baked or fried filled buns that have been a Russian street staple for centuries. Fillings span savory — cabbage with boiled egg, minced beef with onion, potato with mushroom, cheese — and sweet, with jam or apple. Each piece is hand-sized and easy to eat walking, and local bakeries turn out fresh batches throughout the day. The smell of them coming out of the oven is hard to walk past.

Best time A snack any time of day. Most bakeries bake fresh rounds every one to two hours, morning through evening.

How to get there Widely available at metro stations, Kuznechny Market, and small bakeries throughout the city.

Travel tips

• Buy from street bakeries with Russian-only signage rather than shops in tourist areas — the price gap is significant.
• Prices run 50–150 roubles each. Pick up several fillings to compare. The cabbage-and-egg version is the most traditional.
• Eat immediately while still warm. The crust softens quickly once they cool.

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#6

📍 Every Russian restaurant and deli counters in supermarkets

Olivier Salad

The salad no Russian celebration is complete without. The original 19th-century recipe was created by chef Lucien Olivier at the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow — in that version, it included ox tongue and caviar. The everyday recipe now uses boiled potato, carrot, sausage, pickled cucumber, peas, and egg bound with mayonnaise. The result is creamy and slightly tart from the pickles — the kind of dish that earns its status as a national classic.

Best time Lunch or dinner as a starter — it works any time of year.

How to get there Available at every Russian restaurant in the city and at deli counters in local supermarkets.

Travel tips

• Order it as a starter before the main course — it's served cold and cuts through the richness of the soup or meat that follows.
• Perekrestok and Lenta supermarkets sell it by weight at the deli counter, cheaper than restaurants and just as good.
• If the menu lists two versions, order domashny (home-style) for a more natural, less processed flavour.

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