Do Russians really eat caviar?

Well, from time to time I get questions about Russian food: what is real and what is "tourist trap" among the dinner preferences. I think I'll make a set of posts on that topic, starting with caviar issue.

We know two main types of caviar, or salt-cured fish-eggs: red and black. Red can be taken from salmon and black from sturgeon. Red is affordable (about 300-500 RUR for the small can) and black is something luxurious (3000-8000 RUR). There are different ways to produce cheap and fake caviar and every Russian can tell you a story when he or she bought a can of colored gelatin for a song thinking in a first place it was a good bargain.

To have caviar at the refrigerator in Russia means you have little feast or you are quite rich. Although red caviar is not very expensive, only few people think of buying it without any reason (not if the New Year was coming or wedding day of your son or anything else which is very exciting). My mom, for example, started to buy it from time to time and now she feels herself as a part of the royal family having a sandwich with red caviar in the morning (remember, sandwiches in Russia do not have two slices of bread, only one - because the second one on the top could hurt the caviar eggs).

This Instagram photo was made few years ago on the 7th March at my work. As you know, we have two very sexist holidays which are also bank holidays: Women Day on 8th of March and Men Day on 23th of February. People of other gender prepare a little feast for their colleagues (or schoolmates).
In this case, our boys got us the big can of caviar to make us feel as princesses :)