For wealthy Russians who want to flout their indifference to the tough economic times ahead, an upscale grocery store in Yekaterinburg is offering a way to show off — a caviar "salad" decorated with a defiant slogan.
On sale at the city's Yeliseyevsky supermarket, the dish consists of a layer of salmon roe topped with an arrangement of sturgeon caviar that spells out the words: "We don't give a damn about the crisis," according to accounts and photos posted online.
The salad sells for 96 rubles ($1.80) per 100 grams, an employee of the city administration's press service, Viktoria Mkrtchyan, said on her Facebook page Wednesday. It was not immediately clear if customers could buy a single 100-gram portion of the salad, which would carry only part of the slogan.
Alexander Ogloblin, owner of the supermarket chain that includes the Yeliseyevsky store, told local news portal 66.ru that he was behind the idea.
"During the last crisis I gave my friend a cake with the same writing," Ogloblin was quoted as saying. "And now, when everybody is talking about nothing but the crisis, we decided to make this joke in the time of cholera."
Despite its high price tag, the salad is popular among customers, he said. The Yeliseyevsky supermarket promotes itself as a grocery store for Yekaterinburg's wealthy elite, local Znak.com news portal reported.
The official name of the dish is the "Demyan Bedny salad," Mkrtchyan wrote — a name honoring a Bolshevik poet and satirist whose Russian pen name translates as "Demyan the Poor."