In the comments I was called a "restaurant child" and accused of writing about a good life in the USSR, which was not the case for the majority of the population. I'm not sure about the majority of the population. Because our family did not belong to the privileged party nomenclature, well, in no way. Is that to the labor elite - the father, after all, an engineer, all his life in aircraft construction.
However, the fact is that a worker at the factory, having a good qualification, earned on a par with my father, if more, remains a fact.
The only difference is that someone was saving up with might and main for a Romanian wall or for a car, while my parents preferred to see, if not the whole world, then the country. Well, during our travels we kept stopping by for food - now in the dining room, then in the restaurant, then in the cafe.
And today there will be a little about the menu of restaurants and what to eat there - it was absolutely accessible to most citizens. As well as getting into a restaurant.
I read a lot that the entrance to the coveted institution was blocked by a formidable doorman, knitted his eyebrows, said "no seats" and expected a bribe. And I don't remember anything like that. Perhaps due to the fact that we went to restaurants during the day (I already wrote that in many establishments children were not allowed in the evening).
True, here in Jurmala we had to wait in line - but only once, when they decided to get into a restaurant at the Jurmala hotel, everyone praised him, but we were not impressed produced: the royal rolls with prunes, which were taken on the hot, were too fat, and the custard for dessert was cloying, but the serving looked excellent, very beautifully. Plus, behind us sat a cheerful and drunken company, in which the neighbors at the table (he was for six people, and so they ended up at the table with strangers) they recognized Gaft and Neilova., and someone else from the then stars.
I don’t remember any more establishments with “branded” and not tasty dishes, the menu in restaurants was practically the same in all parts of the USSR, where I happened to be. Usually we took salads: vegetable, "Olivier", "Stolichny", occasionally - crab (with natural crabs), sometimes - meat. A portion of salad is about a ruble the most expensive. At the same time, the portion was far from small, not for losing weight.
Of the soups, we most often ordered a hodgepodge. Delicious, the infection was. It also cost about a ruble per serving. Salad and hodgepodge could be full, just full (that's me about portion sizes). A portion of soup (not a hodgepodge) of 500 grams rarely cost more than a ruble, more often it was cheaper. An exception, perhaps, is fish hodgepodge with sturgeon.
Shish kebab was rarely taken for hot meals. Good shish kebab was made in few places. Here chicken tobacco - often - cost 1.50 and a little more, but not more than 2 rubles. Roast beef, rump steak, Kiev cutlets, langette, beef stroganoff - the choice of hot meat dishes was not too extensive due to the fact that the cutlet always and everywhere was called a cutlet, but everything was tasty and not too expensive (up to 1.50 most often, and some positions even cheaper ruble.). I hardly remember fish dishes, but sturgeon or pike perch in Polish was almost everywhere.
Eating five to seven rubles in a restaurant for the whole family of four, even if you don't order alcohol or expensive snacks, was quite real. Moreover, the food is tasty and satisfying. Salad + hot or salad + soup, children - ice cream. So I'm sorry, I can't understand why a Soviet restaurant is considered a luxury. Rather, he just corresponded to the main idea of public catering: accessible.
Right now, for many, given their income, going to a restaurant has become a luxury, yes.
Shl. In "Prague" they served wonderful snacks from jellied sturgeon rolled into an interesting curl, halves of an egg and caviar - red or black. Now I'm trying to remember how much the serving cost - 1.55, sort of. Maybe someone also remembers them and, most importantly, knows the recipe for the jelly that was used to fill the fish? It was amazingly tasty ...