But what about the food, you ask?

Recently, I tried to wrest from Roman Kaplan the Samovar's recipe for the delicious beet soup spelled in our pathetic Latin letters variously as borsht, borshcht, borscht, or really however you want, but economically lettered in Russian as борщ. O, борщ! Your color so deeply pink, your taste so rich and hearty in winter, so refreshing in summer! You vary seasonally, you are endlessly attractive, you can be eaten (in Russia) or drunk (in America) hot or cold. Борщ, you are an ethnographic history of central and eastern Europe and Asia—from our family recipe we can trace (forgive the pun) our roots.

Roman was—there is no better word—cagey. Lynn Visson's The Russian Heritage Cookbook: A Culinary Heritage Preserved in 360 Authentic Recipes, newly updated and republished in 2009, happened to be lying on the table. He picked it up and said, «Sometimes we use this one.» I looked. There were several pages of recipes. I glanced over them and picked one out. «This one?» He looked. «Yes,» he replied. «But we don't use meat…we make our own stock, from beef…no celery…potatoes, yes…» And so on.

I'll keep trying, folks. And in the meantime you can't go wrong with Visson's truly authentic recipes—a lifetime of experience and research has gone into the making of that book. Or try Please to the Table, a delightful literary and gastronomical exploration of recipes from across the former Soviet Union. For the Samovar's own recipe, we may ultimately have to content ourselves with having the борщ onsite. But Roman did promise to share some vodka recipes soon…