We continue a series of collective cultural events dedicated to our city. This time the campaign of the S-Engineering staff was devoted to the culinary heritage of Odesa. Together with the local historian and anchorman Eugeniy Grinkevich, our colleagues learned what they ate and drank in old Odesa, where and how they did it, what the kitchen tables offered and how much it all cost.
Odesa is perhaps the only city in the world that has its own signature cuisine. Like the whole atmosphere of the city, the Odesa cuisine was formed from the mixing and interweaving of the culinary traditions of dozens of nationalities whose representatives have inhabited the free marine city since its foundation. Jewish fish, Bulgarian pepper, Moldovan brynza, Georgian spices, Ukrainian borscht and Greek salad are only a small part of what we eat today. But even in the days of Gogol and Pushkin, Odesa was the center of secular and, therefore, restaurant life. And in order to surprise the honorable guests with gastronomic delights, and in hot climates, the whole cooking fantasy of numerous establishments worked. Houses on Deribasovskaya, Rishelyevskaya, Ekaterininskaya and Pushkinskaya still keep in themselves the memory of those institutions, and some have kept the authentic name, like Fanconi or Gambrinus. Walking on foot all the locations, the participants of the excursion listened to stories about tsimse, fried Black Sea flounder, eggplant ikra (having nothing common with caviar, but named the same) and forshmak, swallowing the saliva of the rising hunger. And finally, here it is - a dinner in the Odessa style, with the same dishes made from local products that the guests of the establishments tasted 200 years ago. The best completion of Friday and work week in the best city on Earth!