I love you like a fat kid loves...caviar flavored potato chips?

I've had several food mishaps since arriving here. I guess it's to be expected in any country where you don't really speak the language, and I should consider myself lucky that I haven't accidentally ordered anything too horrifying.

Two of my major mishaps have occurred at Teremok, the McDonald's of the blini world. In an effort to be healthy, I tried to order buckwheat at Teremok, but the first time I did so, they didn't have the kind I wanted (all I recognized in that name was "зеленой," which means green, so I figured there'd be vegetables in it). I settled instead for две сосиски, two hotdogs, and got a pile of buckwheat with two hotdogs on the side. I'm not quite sure what I was expecting, but it was a little more substantial than what I ended up with. The next time, I got the зеленой one, which had a bunch of other words in the description that I didn't know and was too lazy to look up. Turns out those unknown words meant pâte and pickles, and the зеленой stuff was little flecks of what might have once been scallions. Pregnant women, take note of this dish; for the rest of the world, it is best ignored.

My favorite mishap took place at a major bookstore on Nevsky Prospect within the first week or two of arriving here. I ordered горячей шоколад (hot chocolate), and received...literally, hot chocolate. As in, melted chocolate that I think was supposed to be extra chocolate for the fondue dish. The waitress smirked as she set this dish down in front of me, and my roommate and I watched as she hurried off to snicker to her friends. I'm certain they were discussing my order because I saw her point to us several times. Turns out, the melted chocolate was delicious and was finished in a matter of minutes.


Another wonderful invention involving chocolate was found by my roommate at the grocery: chocolate cheese. While the idea is ingenious and has enormous potential, it needs some work before it becomes a wild success.

Lastly is something I'm not sure I would categorize as one of my own mishaps, though it certainly is on someone's part. Russian Lays tends to be a bit more creative with its chip flavor than American Lays. Luckily, my roommate has been quite enthusiastic about sampling every flavor of chip known to Russia,
which has spared me from having to buy them myself. All in all, the flavors are pretty accurate, with the exception of red caviar, which tastes more like butter than anything else.