Food Notes

b The Center for People’s Nutrition organized an unusual charity event at Svyato-Danilov monastery in Moscow this summer (above). On Peter & Paul Day the center created a 50 meter long kulebyaka pie filled with fruit and vegetables. It took 300 kg of flour to bake the monster pie, but less than an hour to divvy it up among the hungry attendees.

b New Russian chocolate maker Korkunov is positioning itself as a premium chocolatier and will launch a line of handmade chocolates in September, according to a report in Vedomosti. To that end, the company has invested $1.2 mn in two new production lines and will increase the staff at its Odintsovo (Moscow region) factory from 80 to 140 employees. Each chocolate will cost $1 – currently the price of half a box of chocolates from other companies. Factory manager Andrei Korkunov says such chocolates were in great demand before the revolution, before automated production processes “rolled over” the candy industry. Every part of the chocolates’ production will be done manually, from cooking the filling, to raising the chocolate “walls” and placing them in special “nests” in their boxes. “No one has produced truly expensive chocolate here [in Russia],” Korkunov said. But such premium products are in high demand in every other country — like Switzerland or Belgium, for instance.”

b Wimm-Bill-Dann, Russia’s largest dairy producer,  is planning to expand its empire into other European countries, company Chairman David Yakobashvili told Reuters. Wimm-Bill-Dann cultivated a foreign image when it was established eight years ago (hence its foreign-sounding name). Back then a foreign name helped products sell better. Now, the Russian company accounts for one third of the Russian juice and dairy market and is considering an initial public offering. According to Reuters, Wimm-Bill-Dann is also planning to issue American Depository Receipts. The company posted a $35 million net profit in 1999 and expects the figure to raise to $41.4 million this year. One of Wimm-Bill-Dann’s juice brands, Wonderberry, is sold in the Benelux countries and Israel, with Germany and France to follow this year.

b The Russian restaurant Russky Pogrebok (in Moscow’s Marriott Grand Hotel) has continued a series of Sunday brunches unveiled in February. This summer the brunch menu featured a hearty combination of Russian and European cuisine, including bliny with red caviar, a pasta-bar, marinated mushrooms, sturgeon and suckling pig. The brunches are accompanied by live music. In July the menu also included a wide selection of Spanish wines from the Torres winery. The brunch costs $35 for adults.

b Competition in the Russian ice cream market is heating up. Ice cream maker AlterVest, from Moscow region, began production just a little over a year ago, in July 1999. The company now produces 30-35 tons of ice cream a day, with over 40 different brands, from traditional “eskimo” bars to tort-morozhenoe (ice cream cake). AlterVest sells 30% of its products in Moscow and the remaining 70% throughout the rest of Russia. (In the photo, AlterVest director Oleg Kovalenko brandishes a new ice cream cake in the shape of the Russian flag.)

b One of Russia’s oldest breweries —Moscow-based Badaevsky— turned 125 this year. The brewery was founded in 1875, when a group of Russian merchants and manufacturers organized the Tryokhgornoye Pivovarennoye Obshchestvo. The brewery had what was then leading-edge technology and was a top bottling brewery in Russia and Europe. In Soviet times, the name was changed from Tryokhgornoye to Badaevsky. In November 1998, at the international professional contest in Russia, “The Best Beer of the Year,” two Badaevskoye brands, Kutuzovskoye (light) and Badaevskoye Special, won gold medals.

b St. Petersburg-based brewery Vienna is exporting its beer to the US, Vedomosti reported. Brewery Director Barry Marshall told the paper that 1 million liters of the Nevskoye Light brand will be exported to America and distributed under a two-year contract with an undisclosed distributor. Vienna is two-thirds owned by the Finnish beer concern Sinebrychoff; the remaining one-third is owned by the EBRD.