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"Riveting - a delicious odyssey full of history, humor, and jaw-dropping stories. If you want to understand the making of modern Russia, read this book." - Daniel Stone, bestselling author of The Food Explorer. A high-spirited, eye-opening, appetite-whetting culinary travel adventure by an award-winning Polish journalist that tells the story of the last hundred years of Russian power through food. In the gonzo spirit of Anthony Bourdain and Hunter S. Thompson, Witold Szabłowski has tracked down - and broken bread with - people whose stories of working in Kremlin kitchens impart a surprising flavor to our understanding of one of the world's superpowers.. In revealing what Tsar Nicholas II's and Lenin's favorite meals were, why Stalin's cook taught Gorbachev's cook to sing to his dough, how Stalin had a food tester while he was starving the Ukrainians during the Great Famine, what the recipe was for the first soup flown into outer space, why Brezhnev hated caviar, what was served to the Soviet Union's leaders at the very moment they decided the USSR should cease to exist, and whether Putin's grandfather really did cook for Lenin and Stalin, Szabłowski has written a fascinating oral history - complete with recipes and photos - of Russia's evolution from culinary indifference to decadence, famine to feasts, and of the Kremlin's Olympics-style preoccupation with food as an expression of the country's global standing.