I was just a kid when I came to the USA so most of my memories are in the context of how different things were after we came to America.

One particularly vivid memory for me is of bananas. My grandma would go on business trips to Moscow sometimes and she would bring bananas back for us. Otherwise the fruits we had were the ones that grew locally, and you had to preserve them if you wanted them out of season. It blew my mind when I came to the USA and I could just go to a grocery store and buy bananas at any time.

There were a few foods there that are harder to find here.

• Buckwheat, which is my favorite grain.

• Fresh peas, not the kind that people eat along with the pod but rather the kind with an inedible pod and big seeds, like canned peas but raw.

• Russian-style rye bread. My family was so surprised that Americans had such an abundance of food but still ate Wonder Bread.

• Kvas, a sweet beverage made out of fermented bread. I think it tastes way better than soft drinks so I’m not sure why everyone isn’t drinking it. Maybe it’s an acquired taste?

Also American cakes are usually terrible and American deep-fried french fries are inferior to Russian pan-fried potatoes.

Edit: one more thing, crepes. They’re not exclusively Russian, of course, but they’ve very common in Russian cooking with a variety of sweet or savory fillings - applesauce, jam, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes, ground meat, etc. Sometimes they’re fried after being filled.