Latvian cooking is built on what grows and keeps in a northern climate: rye, root vegetables, dairy, pork, freshwater and Baltic fish, and berries gathered from the forest. It is not elaborate, and it was never meant to be. What it does have is a small set of dishes that appear again and again, on restaurant menus and family tables alike, and that give a visitor a fair sense of the place in a few meals.
The staples
Start with rye bread, which is less a side dish than the foundation of the whole cuisine. It is dark, dense, faintly sweet and sour at once, and it is served with almost everything. Grey peas with bacon is the dish most often named when Latvians are asked what the national food is: large earthy peas cooked with onion and salt pork, plain and filling, traditionally eaten around midwinter. Cold beetroot soup is its summer counterpart, a bright pink kefir-based soup served chilled with cucumber, dill and a boiled egg, and far better than the colour leads you to expect.
Baked and smoked
Small bacon-filled pastries appear at every celebration and most bakeries, crescent-shaped and best eaten warm. Smoked fish is a coastal tradition and widely available in the markets, from smoked sprats to whole smoked bream. Layered rye bread pudding, made from breadcrumbs, cream and berry preserve, is the dessert that turns up most often and is a great deal more appealing than a description of its ingredients suggests.
- Sklandrausis. An open tart of rye pastry filled with carrot and potato, sweet and savoury together.
- Curd snacks. Glazed sweet curd bars sold in every shop and eaten by everyone.
- Smoked sprats. The classic Baltic preserve, usually eaten on buttered rye with egg.
- Black Balsam. A bitter herbal liqueur, an acquired taste neat and much easier mixed.
Where to try them
The market halls are the cheapest introduction and the most honest one. Beyond that, the canteen-style restaurants that serve office workers at lunchtime are where the everyday versions of these dishes are eaten, at everyday prices. The more formal restaurants in the Old Town do refined versions that are often excellent, but they are not where the food comes from.
A note on seasons
Several of these dishes are seasonal in practice even when available year round. Cold beetroot soup belongs to summer, grey peas to winter, and the berry desserts to whatever the forest produced that year. Eating them in the wrong season is not a mistake, but eating them in the right one is noticeably better.
Eight dishes will not exhaust Latvian cooking, but they will orient you. Try the bread first, the peas once, and the cold soup on the warmest day of your visit.
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