The article is devoted to the relationship between the linguistic and cultural aspects of communicative behavior and their consideration in the content of teaching Russian as a foreign language. The object of our study is the norms and traditions of everyday behavior of Russian and Chinese culture representatives in the field of public food service. The purpose of the study is to compare Russian and Chinese traditions of communicative behavior in the gastronomic field, to determine the level of ethnocultural and linguistic knowledge of international students in this study area, to identify the relationship between their level of knowledge and the development of the students’ intercultural communicative competence, which is an integral characteristic of the personality. We aim to substantiate the need to take into account the features of the national communicative behavior in the field of public food service in the content of teaching the Russian language to Chinese students. The study was conducted using the methods of the analysis of scientific and educational literature on the research problem, the survey of 962 students from higher educational institutions of China, mathematical processing of the obtained data and a comparative analysis. Quantitative and substantive processing of the survey data showed considerable differences in the norms and traditions of Russian and Chinese culture representatives in this study area, a low level of students’ ethnocultural knowledge, a high level of students’ lexical knowledge in the field of public food service and cultural barriers affecting the level of Chinese students’ intercultural communicative competence development. The article comes to the conclusion about the need to take into account the communicative-behavioral aspect of everyday life culture and the norms and traditions of Russian and Chinese cultures in the field of public food service in teaching Russian as a foreign language. Research prospects are connected with the development of the educational interactive platform “Gastronomic trip through time”.