Sic transit gloria cassoulet

There's no satisfying everybody. I write about big issues, small ones, and everything in between. If you hang out here long enough, you'll find something you can relate to. The actual point of this blog is to encourage discussion about cafes, pubs, and places like that that come to mean a lot to people for reasons beyond the food you eat there. That's actually a significant issue. Not the end of the world, mind you, but I find that people like to talk about it. I know I do.

My mother never liked restaurants and caffes and tried to instill squeamishness about it in us. We had a caucasian restaurant Kazbek not far from home (now it is pub 16 Tons), devil knows how it's smells lurred me in childhood, but to all whining moter always replied NO - it's a place for grown-ups.
When we accidentally visited a public dining-room, even ordinary egges with mayonaise tasted for us like food of gods, but when i growed up i lost interest to public catering almost completely.

My previous employers used to celebrate corporative holidays in posh restaurants, it was interesting as a novelty, now i find nothing special in it and consider such pastime not worthy of paying from ones own pocket.I have never been even to McDonalds and sushi (person who hasn't eaten sushi is so rare in Moscow that soon i'll be caught and shown for money i guess, must visit it at last). From my observations atmosphere in public food establishments, even in the most respectable of them, has someting in common with that of a railway station. There are people who can't eat at home, either have no home, or travelling tourists, men for whom inviting woman to a restaurant is manifest of the highest romanticism or usual ritual before dragging to bed. Smells like a railway station, indeed, and rather boring. The most bored people on earth i guess are waiters who observe that drunken public, they would rather spit in the plate, but have to put on a polite smile. No, i will not believe to that smiles :)

When we are travelling sometimes we buy food in local shops, ordinary fruits, milk, pasty. (Grocery near Sennaya in St.Petersburg sells unsurpassed pastry!) Once we entered real 'raspivochnaya'not far from Morskoj cathedral, prices for bread and cheese were so low that we hardly believed our eyes, it turned out to be the haunt of local clochards and alcoholics, they were very galant and sympathetic closhards, freed some space for us and very soon left. There remained only a young student eating sausage with a huge mug of beer and then entered an intelligent looking woman, neatly dressed who ordered a huge glass of wodka with a tiny pirozhok (that was early in the morning!). Public catering is interesting for a tourist, that's true.

Here in Miami there is a little bakery with the oddly hip name "Chocolate Fashion." My husband and I have been going since before we had kids and we've grown to love the place and the staff. It was our second son's first outing at 4 days old. Everything from the baguettes to the potatoes lyonnaise to the lamb stew is amazing. And so are the chocolate truffles.