Soviet public catering (21 photos)

5 June 2017

For the first course - pearl barley soup, for the second - mashed potatoes with a cutlet, and for dessert - dried fruit compote. This was roughly what lunch was like in any Soviet canteen.

The main task was to quickly and satisfyingly feed the working man so that he could again go to work for the good of the Motherland.

And even though the food and service there were far from being at restaurant level, many still remember factory or student canteens with nostalgia.

Soviet students in one of the cafes in Moscow, 1925

After the revolution, the issue of organizing public catering became especially acute, and soon throughout the country former bars, cafes and restaurants began to turn into standard canteens with characteristic service. In 1923, the Narpit association was created, which was supposed to exercise special control over food establishments, and the next year the first kitchen factory in the USSR appeared. By 1933, there were already 105 of them throughout the country, and there were also more than 500 mechanized canteens and more than 38 thousand departmental ones.

Dining room of the Mineral promartel, 1934

Lunch in the Lenpromtorg canteen, 1933

Queue at the canteen in Moscow on Bolshaya Dmitrovka, 1939

First, second and compote.

Before the war, dining rooms were considered a highly cultural place; the interior design even included stucco, and there were tablecloths on the tables. They tried in every possible way to create pleasant conditions for people so that during lunch a working person could relax. After the Great Patriotic War, the country was going through difficult times; the menu in the canteens was quite meager. But gradually life in the USSR was restored.

Workers at lunch.

Soviet posters in the dining room, 1930s

Restaurant in Khabarovsk, 1960s

Barmaid at a cafe in Yalta, 1960

Restaurants were opened where ordinary workers could go if they wanted to spend money. The menu there was much more varied than in the dining room; you could even order game - remember the movie "The Diamond Arm". After the collapse of the USSR, public catering has changed significantly. McDonald's came to Russia, market relations, competition, and today it is almost impossible to find those same Soviet canteens.