food around town(at least as far as we can walk)

So here are some of the places where we have eaten. Sadly, we don't call some of them by the given names because we don't know them. The top two are from Krendel (how we pronounce it, probably not totally accurate but it works for us). We think this is one of the hardest places to order from but the food is pretty stinkin' good. What you see here is two eggs over medium, small steaks, potatoes, onions, tomatoes, cheese, all in a skillet = Delicious! The latte is called the "Balshoy Latte" in Russian which means the big delectable latte in English. They don't have an English menu for some reason, but once you figure out what is what, it is worth the trouble.

The next photo is from the "Russian Restaurant" which has a name but we don't know it and can't pronounce it. This is one of our favorite places, now that we know how to order. We have found that in most of the places we have been the food is extremely fresh, as in they might have just run out and picked the tomato and killed the chicken fresh. They have a menu in English which we also appreciate.

The last photo is from a place called (or should I say pronounced) Skief. We went there based on a recommendation from an American couple. He described an item with chicken and vegetables rolled up in the local version of a tortilla and deep fried (aka Chimichanga). We were drawn in by the cross cultural possibilities of finding Mexican-ish food in Pavlodar. We found they also had chips and salsa, onion rings, and shakes. Unfortunately, they were all breaded with the same batter and fried in the same oil. On this place we were split, Jeannie liked it and I didn't. However, I would go back and try something else because you just never know.

There are a couple of other places we go to probably too often. Classic Pizza has an English menu but there are some translation errors, like peppers in translated as pepperoni. So when you order the "piquante" (picante) pizza with "pepperoni" what you get is a nice ham pizza with nice spicy peppers. It was still very good and we have ordered it several times. Classic isn't Pizza Hut, but you know what they say...

The Old Englishman (one of the names we don't have any problem pronouncing) is also a favorite stop. No English menu but there are pictures. They have fajitas (pronounced phonetically fa-gee-tahs here by the way, just like it in pronounced in Tipton county, we have been corrected several times). They are very tasty. They also have a taco salad with the shell bowl, very good also. I would recommend something from the shish-ke-bob selection near the back. It comes with this wonderful salsa that is muy bueno, or karasho as they say here.

We found another pizza place this week that was also very good. It is supposedly named after a Turkish city - Ephes. It is hard to miss with the big giant retro PIZZA sing on the side of the building.

The last good place I want to mention is the one we call IHOP. It is not really an IHOP, that would be too much and probably like the Dennys in Japan. It is really called The Cherry or something like that except in Russian of course. It has a 50s diner look to it with lots of chrome and Naugahyde. We had the "Americanski" breakfasts which were pretty good. Two thumbs up.

There are other places too. One bad place to mention was BurgerMaxx - worse than McDonald's, can't say much more than that.

Eating out here is pretty much an adventure every time. We have advanced the "point and grunt" method of ordering to the "point and say 'eta' (this)" method. Early on we had some interesting meals where we weren't sure what we were going to get. And there is an occasion where we are surprised by what shows up at the table. 99% of the time, it is something good. We haven't accidentally ordered pigs snout or anything like that, yet. There was an occasion where we asked for the check and got tea (chai), which was understandable.

The prices are all very reasonable and the servings are proportionate for what you pay. There has only been one occasion where we paid $10.00 per person, and that was a lot of food. Normally we pay $7.00 each including drinks and tip. We could probably just order one thing and split it most of the time except that Jeannie likes gross things like onions and garlic.

I am working on getting these all put on Google Earth or Google maps along with walking times from the apartment and of course our expert reviews.