I had dinner this evening with James, an American expat who has worked in Bishkek for 2.5 years now, and he brought along a Russian buddy, Alex. James speaks adequate-ish Russian, and Alex speaks adequate-ish English, so we bounced back and forth between the languages all evening.

We had dinner at Barclay's Pub. Wow, the food was pretty decent. Back in the Soviet period you couldn't get decent salad greens in the USSR to save your soul, and the salads we had tonight included fresh arrugula. I was stunned. So what was on the menu?

I grabbed two salads, the first being a "Borana Tower" salad, which is alternating layers of roasted eggplant, grilled beef and tomatoes on a bed of basil. Although it's not obvious from the picture, the salad was a good four inches high, so "tower" wasn't entirely inaccurate.

I added to that a salad called "Summer in Paris," which consisted of arrugula, pears, yellow peppers, feta, pine nuts, and some very thinly sliced lemon wedges.

James went for a skewer of chicken shishkabob.

And he added to that a Greek salad.

Alex went for a chicken fricasee with rice.

And he complemented that with a chicken caesar salad.

Times have really changed when you can get food like this in the fUSSR, even if it is a touch pricey.