In
the time of Peter the Great, the czar’s chief of police trained a bear
to offer visitors a cup of pepper brandy. Down it, and you were ushered
in; fail, and you were mauled (or “hugged,” as one 19th-century account
delicately put it).
At Masha and the Bear,
which opened in January in East Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there is no
such entrance fee or ursine enforcer. But a challenge of sorts awaits on
the drinks menu: horseradish vodka, infused in house. According to
Vitaly Sherman, who runs the restaurant with his wife, Maria (known as
Masha), Peter the Great mandated that all Russian inns keep a stash of
horseradish vodka in their cellars for the rejuvenation of weary
travelers. If an innkeeper did not comply, “he was executed,” Mr.
Sherman said.
I
could find no verification of this penalty in published histories. But
the mind-swiping shock of the horseradish vodka — a simultaneous kick in
the chest and the head, the vodka kindling and widening the heart, the
horseradish fizzing up behind the eyes and then prickling down the brain
stem — convinced me of its restorative powers.
Mr.
Sherman, a native of Belarus who came to the United States in 1989, is
an effusive ambassador for the cuisine and culture of his youth. The
restaurant’s name comes from a folk tale about a little girl lost in the
woods who outwits a bear and bends him to her will; a Russian cartoon inspired by the tale sometimes plays on the flat-screen TV above the bar.
The
chef, Anya Vasilenko from Ukraine, cleaves to tradition. Ukha, a soup
purportedly beloved by Ivan the Terrible, is clear and deep, its broth a
memory of salmon, sturgeon and branzino, brightened with dill and
lemon. Blintzes are near-weightless kerchiefs of dough, to be folded
around sour cream and red caviar. Roughly patted pelmeni come crammed
with chicken or beef and pork in the Siberian style, attended by sweated
onions and more sour cream.
Olivier
salad was invented in Moscow in the mid-19th century by a Belgian or
French chef (accounts disagree). Originally an extravagant assemblage of
grouse, caviar, lobster and veal tongue, it was rehabilitated under
Stalin with plain chicken and potatoes, although the mayonnaise, and a
touch of decadence, remain.
Herring
in a Fur Coat could be the title of a Soviet absurdist fable about a
proletarian Cinderella who rejects the czarevitch and runs off with the
rat turned coachman. Instead, it is a salad born of the Russian
Revolution, with diced herring (staple of the working man) and potatoes
(birthright of the peasantry) united under a mantle of beets in
Bolshevik red. As served here, it has an almost bourgeois air, presented
in what looks like a footed candy dish, with a plume of parsley. On a
recent evening, the herring was buried deep and close to undetectable,
and the beets were as sweet as shattered macarons.
Tags : Cartoon for kids , Cartoon English
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