Sunday, August 31, 2014

Chef in chief Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin speaks on "the culinary arts"


All-Russian Youth Forum "Seliger-2014": Vladimir Putin visits the 10th All-Russian Youth Forum "Seliger-2014". Under the current session "Generation Znany" forum gathered graduate students and young teachers of history, political science, sociology, philosophy and economics from the Russian regions - kremlin.ru

Meeting with members of the forum "Seliger-2014"
August 29, 2014 Tver region, Seliger
President discussed with the forum participants topical issues of political and economic life of the country, and international problems.

Among the exchanges:
D.DOZBOROV: City Volgodonsk, Rostov region, Denis Dozborov. In particular, about judo and sambo, where I wanted to start. Since 2010, in the city of Volgodonsk in the morning, realizing our project, all children do exercises. It would be desirable in principle to the whole of Russia did it in the morning before the training process.
But it's not that. The fact is that today the third gym class, it was introduced as an innovative, as I understand it, and we are now preparing with the city Department of Education to enter the third gym class sambo and judo for boys and girls - let's say, yoga, fitness, sports dancing, cooking, nutrition in general. To have direction ...


VLADIMIR PUTIN: Of all the arts, for us the most important is the culinary arts, and here of all sports cooking - the best sport.
( Laughter. ) [in Russian-language  transcript: Из всех искусств для нас важнейшим является кулинарное искусство, а здесь из всех видов спорта кулинария – самый лучший спорт. (Смех.)]

Image from, with caption: Advertisement poster for the 2004 rebranding relaunch of the Putin Poutine ! fast food chain, popular particularly in the eastern provinces of Canada. After the 2004 relaunch, the chain renamed itself to Uncle Volodya's, to capitalize on the popularity of the company's CEO and mascot, Uncle Volodya Poutine (civilian birth name Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin).

The Putin family emigrated to Canada from the Soviet Union in the late 1950s and settled down in Quebec. They eventually started doing business with their own little restaurant. While struggling at first, they took a liking to the increasingly popular, locally invented recipes - among them poutine - and decided to experiment with hybridizing them with traditional Russian recipes or ingredients. The restaurant's unique approach helped it to quickly build up a good reputation throughout all of Montreál [JB note: I am not responsible for this misplaced accent], leading to the eventual opening of a chain of local restaurants. Utilising the lucky resemblance of their surname to the name of the Canadian fries-based dish, the Putins christened the chain Putin Poutine (the ! was added in the 1980s, as part of an effort to make the chain's branding "more hip"). In the following decades, the growing company expanded throughout the entire province of Quebec, and then into the maritimes and even Ontario. Despite the economic slump the company experienced in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the 2004 rebranding seems to have done the trick. As the optimistic slogan of the rebranding campaign promised, the characteristic "oh so Russian flavour... on very Quebecois poutine !" has been preserved and further improved. Uncle Volodya's is now as popular as ever...

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