“Modern youth eats something disgusting, and that’s why everyone gets sick, here we ate excellent quality food, we were in no hurry to go anywhere” – about this saying that everyone has heard at least once in their life from their grandparents.
Indeed, McDonald’s USA only opened in 1990 and was more exotic than the everyday norm as it is now. It would seem that the assertion of fast food culture that our elderly relatives are particularly unfamiliar with must be reasonable and justified. But in fact everything is a little more complicated and interesting.
When we talk about some kind of fast food in the USSR, usually pasties, belyashi and a glass of lemonade from a machine immediately come to mind. All of this is true, of course, but far from reflecting the whole picture.
First: potato chips.
Even though these crispy potato wedges in bags came to us almost a century after they appeared, it’s still not too late. The first crispy potato “Sliced Moskovsky” began to be produced in 1963! Yes, this is the same “Moscow Potato” that we now see on the shelves of modern stores, with a smiling girl on the package.
They are produced in small bags of 10 kopecks – a price you can generally afford. That’s why on the Internet you can find many memories of how children shared a few bags of delicious crunchy treats with the whole garden. True, it was not possible to get it everywhere, mostly adults were from the same Moscow, and at a young age someone did business, sold a little more to friends, and then gave money to their parents with a request to buy. a few more boxes.
Many in his memoirs admire the taste and emphasize that there is nothing superfluous in these chips: just potatoes and salt. But few people talk about the fact that due to the peculiarities of production they are very oily, and then all hands are in oil, almost elbow-deep.
By the way, an interesting fact: For some time in the documentation, chips were called chibs for some reason.
Second, the hamburgers.
It can be assumed that burgers appeared with us when McDonald’s and other large fast food restaurants entered the market. But actually, that’s not the case at all. In 1936, the Soviet People’s Commissar Anastas Mikoyan went to America to study new technologies that were actively developing there after the Great Depression, when the task was to adequately and cheaply feed the population.
Mikoyan brought many ideas and production plans from that trip: canning, so we got condensed milk and peas in jars, ice cream production on the conveyor. But Anastas especially liked hamburgers. The convenience of this dish was that all the ingredients were standardized: the cutlets were pre-prepared and frozen at the factories, the buns were cooked to a certain size, all that remained was to bring them all to special stalls and cafes, and then fry and combine. turn it into a ready-made sandwich.
After returning home, Mikoyan initiated, first of all, the launch of this type of standardized production in the USSR. Special fryers purchased in the USA also helped with this. We called the hamburger “Hot Moscow Cutlets”, and in 1937 outlets were opened in the largest cities of the Union: Moscow, Leningrad, Baku and Kiev. They were sold for 50 caps from special cars and were quite successful as a convenient and hot snack. True, difficulties arose with bread, because it was impossible to make buns similar to American buns, so in some places they began to do it more easily and put a cutlet between two regular breads, sometimes even black.
But we had our own innovation: the sale of hamburgers paired with a drink. Usually it was tomato juice, lemonade or kvass. With this idea, we even got ahead of the Americans, who at that time had not yet managed to create such a gastronomic couple.
Despite their success, hamburgers lost their popularity during the Great Patriotic War and did not recover until McDonald’s came along after that.
Third, the french fries.
To be honest, deep frying technology is quite old. There were also french fries, but now they are not sold in cafes as they are freshly fried and mostly frozen. It did not have much popularity, because spending so much oil on frying potatoes seemed wasteful to the Soviet hostess, but still sometimes stumbled upon the shelves. By the way, the heroine of the movie “Girls” even mentioned this along with other ways of cooking potatoes.
Many people prepared a similar dish at home by dicing potatoes and frying them in a few inches of oil, but it wasn’t easy and it was quite expensive.
Fourth – hot dogs.
Few people thought, but our sausage in dough is the closest sibling to hot dogs. It is believed that in the 60s Khrushchev brought the idea from his trip to America, where he especially loved hot dogs and buns with gravy. It seems that the dishes are different, even the dough and preparation method, but the essence turned out to be the same. True, in our country they are more fond of schoolchildren and students and still occupy a leading position in school buffets.
There is a widespread opinion that all dishes are much better before, due to the presence of GOSTs and strict supervision. Let’s say we ate healthier food because of it, even if it’s the same fast food. But in fact, the statement is controversial. If everything was the same everywhere, people wouldn’t go to “that grocery store after three stops” or the loose place for “Ostankino” sour cream. Quality and taste can vary greatly depending on the region of production and manufacturer. Often times, food had to be transported in bulk from other cities and stored until a special occasion.
The second misconception is the fact that in the USSR only home-cooked food was preferred and very few public meals were served, mostly in canteens at work. But eating simple food “like everyone else” in cafes and kiosks was practically one of the national ideas. Housework takes a lot of time and someone has to work.
Each generation always has its own guilty pleasure meal, and as we can see, the Soviet Union, despite its seriousness, is no exception. Our elderly relatives also did not mind to enjoy delicious snacks on the go, sometimes they did not have enough time to cook at home, but it is better not to tell the children about it. After all, how to instill a love of healthy food in them? And don’t we do that?
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editors’ position.