Our best experience in St Petersburg: Dinner with the Prokopenkos

What do you look for when you travel?

The must-visit, to-do listicles usually include UNESCO sites, significant points of attraction and to-die-for dishes, and I know this because I’ve written so many of these articles. But increasingly, I’m beginning to realise that the most meaningful moments of travel happen in the ordinary. They exist in moments of human connection, in empathy, in the recognition that we are all not that different.  We were fortunate to experience that on the Home Cooked St Petersburg and Market Tour with St Petersburg Urban Adventures.

Sampling local food at Sennaya Market

Our experience began with a visit to Sennaya market. While I was initially concerned that the experience would be somewhat similar to the market experience we had on our Total Moscow tour, it turns out that I had nothing to worry about. Sennaya market had none of the hipster vibes that Danilosky Market possessed. Instead it was local to the core, and reminiscent to the wet markets in Singapore. Oksana, our guide, assured us that prices there were the lowest in the city. While she brought us to grocers that peddled similar fare as the ones in Moscow – cheese, honey, pickles – the magic lay in the entirely new flavours that were introduced. Smoked cheese that tasted like dried cuttlefish (where has this been all my life?!), cedar honey, and bear meat (this I don’t really need to eat again) were just some of the examples.

Dinner with the Prokopenko family

With our appetites sufficiently whet, we boarded the metro to the Petrogradsky neighbourhood where the Prokopenko family live. This allowed us the rare opportunity to see the interior of a communalka. During the communist era, the government had confiscated buildings belong to the aristocracy and apportioned them into communal apartments, where families from different flats would share a common kitchen and bathing facilities. Today, these flats, which are now privately-owned, still retain the structure and style of the homes of yesteryear.

As we neared the apartment, we could hear the excited voices of the Prokopenko children reverberating through the stairwell. We were warmly greeted by Olya, their mother, quickly ushered us into a room where a table had been lovingly set for us, filled with bread, vinegret (a traditional Russian beetroot salad), herring and kvass. The first dish served was borscht with a generous serving of sour cream, the best I’d tasted in two weeks of travelling around Russia and Estonia. This was followed by mashed potatoes and pork, served with sides of laughter, plum cognac, and conversations with the family on life and work in St Petersburg.

The highlight of the meal, however, was dessert – pancakes! The Russians call them blini,  and they hold special significance as they remind the Russians of the sun, which they don’t get much of given the long winters. ET was giddy with happiness when he realized he could drizzle condensed milk on the blini, together with apricot jam and honey. Ignat, the Prokopenko’s fourth child, was utterly convinced that pancakes make him strong, and sought to convince us by proclaiming this every single time he took a bite. You got to be there to fully appreciate how adorable his grin was when he tried to flex his arms!

By the time dinner was over, the kids had warmed up to us considerably. I was playing around with my Instagram filters and they were instantly hooked. Peals of laughter filled the air and a lot of tongue-sticking and mouth-gaping videos ensued as they were super tickled by those filters. While Oksana’s excellent translation made it possible for us to converse with Vitaliy and Olya about life in Russia, there were also moments that transcended language barriers. Laughter became our common language, one which was freely shared as it connected families from entirely different cultural backgrounds.

The other common language was music. The Prokopenkos love music, and it didn’t take too long for Vitaliy to whip out his guitar and serenade us with his rendition of Wind of Change. My dad had memories of listening to Russian folk songs when he was a teenager, and it was to everyone’s surprise when the entire family sang a rendition of Katyusha and he hummed along together with them. That scene is not one I’m likely to forget anytime soon.

Time is fleeting when you are having fun, and we bade the Prokopenkos farewell after spending two hours with them. We would have loved to spend more time with the kids, and continue our conversations with Vitaliy and Olya. Interestingly, the limited time that we had in this experience actually did make it even more authentic, as we understood how our hosts, just like any other family, would need time to wind down in the evening and put their kids to bed. We left realizing that this was so much more than a food experience – it was a privileged insight and encounter with a beautiful family that left an indelible impression on all of us.

The best experience

Aptly enough, the essence of that evening could be best summarized with the lyrics of Wind of Change:

I had never noticed that the song was set in Russia, and reading up on it now, I realise that it was written by the Scorpions to celebrate glasnost, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to signify their hope for the coming era. Goosebumps, guys. I’m just beginning to realise the cultural significance of that song, that moment, and I cannot help but notice how relevant the song still is today.

So despite writing this a week after our encounter, while travelling through the rolling hills of Turkey, I find myself transported back to the magic of the moment. And once again, my heart is so full.

ETSY Explores were guests of St Petersburg Urban Adventures. However, all opinions remain ours and are completely unbiased.

This article first appeared in ETSY Explores.