Museum of Public Catering

If you want to understand a country, look at the dinner table. If you don’t want to eat just go to the Museum of Public Catering. Run by retired restaurant employees now in their seventies and eighties, the Museum of Public Catering looks back at the last hundred years of Russian food. Over 10,000 objects are on display from a collection first begun by Nikolai Korshunov, the former director of the famous Sovetsky restaurant. Items include the sumptuous pre-revolutionary menus to sparse Soviet canteen food. The museum is open three hours every week and even then it’s best to phone first.