beluga caviar, reindeer, shish-kabob, weird stuff in aspic, pork cutlets, multiple combinations of either pickled or cooked root vegetables, cabbage, noodles, dumplings and meat, fish in many variations, kefir, yoghurt. Their food tends to be heavier than ours, but is pretty good.

Don't stock up though, they aren't coming. I was watching a documentary on Netflix, and it looks like it will be the Nicaraguan and Cuban armies who invade us, with maybe a few Russian advisors.

I visited Russia in 1993, a week after Boris Yeltsin stood up to the tanks surrounding the Russian White House. I remember seeing the black soot above the windows of the building. I was primarily in Gatchina/St Petersburg (airport still said Leningrad) and Moscow.

I ate in both Soviet era cafeterias (both public and academic--as nasty as any movie could make it), academic dinners, homes of private citizens and in a very upscale restaurant in Moscow.

My main takeaway was the the Soviet empire had committed a crime against its people in terms of what it did to the food supply and eating habits. Food was very scarce and nasty in the public markets. But you could get good stuff in the black market.

I have to tell you I was amazed at what I had in the homes of private citizens, how they got the ingredients and put it all together was and still is a mystery. This was cooking from scratch and at a very high level. Given the ingredients, Russians really know how to cook. They know food.

So you would have to have very good food to impress them.

We will never get seafood good enough, at least not for those accustomed to the fruits of the arctic circle. Don't even think of providing vodka. It is pointless.

Good beef, yes, that we can provide, but make sure to cover it in mayonnaise--it's amazing what they can do with it. And they put it (or some variant) on everything that doesn't come out of the sea.

If we go organic/fresh/in season, we can provide them with good fruits and vegetables. That is generally in short supply due to infrastructure problems. Great big Idaho potatoes would be a good root vegetable choice.

I don't think they will know what to do with Kale or other odd modern lettuces. They do cabbage. Went to Pizza Hut wanting a personal pizza and salad bar on a cold winter's day after visiting Lenin's tomb. Only cabbage on the salad bar--no lettuce. So keep it simple--iceberg, romaine, spinach they will need time to get used to kale, arugula and the rest.

Also thinking our monster chickens with wing drummettes that look like legs might freak them out. So if you want to serve hot wings, make sure you use the scrawny old school chickens.

Cognac, they like good cognac, but it will need to be top shelf. Cuban cigars and of course, pot. These would probably be good.

Remember, the true Russian elite will have been living in London for sometime and will be nearly impossible to please.

We need to focus on pleasing the rank and file--"middle class" Russian masters. Tickets to Disney World will be much appreciated.

Just my thoughts.

comrade. She hates beets, loves vodka.
Didn't I read somewhere that Smirnoff is not a good vodka?
I need vodka guidance, please.

featuring Eduard Shevardnadze's grand-daughter Sophie (the one in green)

[video:https://youtu.be/BYlm5w_d8Kc]

in the hope they would send them into a re-education camp to make them "great" again.

consulting career, I was working for a client in White Plains, New York, and was asked to host a group of 4 Russian engineers from a design center in Moscow. They came prepared with a long list of different bourbons to try. They can get vodka, Scotches, and all the european wines they want- but not bourbon, apparently.

At the time I was living at 6700 feet elevation, so I was in prime drinking shape down at sea level. We went out after work each day to all the various watering holes around White Plains, crossing off item after item on their list- and then I'd drive them back to their hotel. On the last day they were in town, I was helping get them back into their hotel after a particularly dissipated expense-account-fueled evening of steak and booze at Ruth's Chris, and their leader (and primary English speaker) threw his arm around my shoulders, exhaled a forty-thousand-horsepower breath in the vicinity of my face, and said "You are now honorary Russian....".

Good times. Don't try to outdrink a Russian engineer- can't be done. All you can hope for is a scoreless tie, and that only if you cheat (by having the altitude acclimatization under your belt, or some other form of blood-doping)...

Vodka.

but mistresses, and submissive ones at that. The Atlantic ran some crazy article about how what Angry White Male Trump supporters really wanted was "submissive Russian women". I'd never call any of the Russian women I've met "submissive".

There were glimmers of this in the ‘90s and the aughts, when angry, white men flew to Moscow, and then St. Petersburg and Kiev, and then Tomsk and Omsk and Vladivostok, in search of beautiful, Russian women to replace their feminist wives in America. (I wrote a story about these men, “From Russia with Pre-Nup,” for GQ.) What they loved about Russian women, I learned, was not just that they were gorgeous, but rather that they were submissive.

Democrats disgust me lately, their media is every bit as bad as the Right's.