In émigré Russian families like Sarraute's, meals were not organized around the starter-main-dessert grid, but around a central core: tea, served at length, originally from the samovar, then from a teapot in Parisian apartments. Everything revolves around it — the zakouski (small savory bites taken before or during), the porridge and pasta dishes that nourish daily, and the sweets (jams, sweetened quark) nibbled cup after cup while talking. Conversation, more than the table, is the real main course.

Two markers of domestic Russian cuisine: toasted buckwheat, the everyday Slavic grain with a nutty, roasted flavor; and the habit of taking a spoonful of jam (varenye) not spread but melted into the tea or eaten separately between sips of the hot brew. Two gestures that the Russian childhood of a Parisian from the 16th arrondissement does not forget.