The Russian table is not divided into starter-main-dessert but into moments: zakuski (small cold and hot dishes set out together to whet the appetite), pervoye (the "first," almost always a soup or hot porridge), vtoroye (the "second," the main dish often based on fish or pastry), and then chai — boiling hot tea accompanied by sweets and comforting drinks that last for hours. For a singer who must protect her voice, it is the warm, nourishing dishes of pervoye and the hot drinks of chai that matter most.

Two pillars of Russian cuisine: toasted buckwheat, a rustic grain found on every table from Saint Petersburg to Krasnodar, and honey, the national sweetener before cane sugar, which warms the throat and soothes the palate. For a singer who avoids cold and dairy on performance days, these two become allies.