Cafe in Kandalaksha-the cafe in the article was nothing like this, just a selection of wooden building pannels!!

It is very easy with the variety of foods available in a British supermarket to forget that in many of the Worlds wild places there is little and sometimes no variety available. Often the local people will have to eat the same type of food day after day with no possibility of variation. This does not mean that the diet available is unpalatable or will lead to malnutrition as this is not the case.

When traveling to remote places the local diet is often sampled and we at Impala Adventures encourage our clients to eat at the places that the locals eat, often well of the beaten track and not at the touristic cafes and hotels that are set up to feed the tourist. This often leads to experiencing some interesting and very different flavours and amazing hospitality.

On one of our adventures to the very North of Russia way beyond the Artic Circle I was traveling with a small group of Land rovers on the road from Murmansk to St Petersburg and around lunchtime came across a roadside café near the mining town of Olengorsk. Here in Russia every building looks as though it has passed through a thousand Artic winters and has just made it. This particular building was probably not going to make the next one.

The car-lorry park was as big as a Tesco car park but sported only a couple of lorries and a few cars that were scattered in a haphazard fashion over the oiled earth. Windows here are small because the winters are tough; its dark for two months and below freezing for many making every building looks deserted. We walked up some rickety steps and opened the door to be met by a blast of heat and at first sight what appeared to be an empty room only partly finished. My first thoughts that this was not a café at all were dispelled when I became aware of talking from the far third of the room.  An old lady came out of what was the kitchen carrying some delicious looking soup. At the far end of the room was a collection of old tables and chairs roughly made and crammed into a small place. Each table had a couple of Russians sat enjoying their midday meal. Attached to the wall near the counter was a television showing a 1920’s comedy with lots of people rushing about hitting other people and blowing trumpets, very surreal?

Now I cannot speak any Russian and none of the Russians spoke English .This is not as much of a problem as you would at first imagine. I smiled at the girl behind the counter that was at least five feet high, the counter that is not the girl. “hello” I said “ I have eight people for lunch, do you have a menu?” the girl looked at me and smiled said something which of course I did not understand so I walked to one the tables apologized to the diners and pointed to the food on the table. We were moving on swiftly now as recognition bounded across the girl’s face which was followed by lots of laughter and smiling from the diners.