A bitter history lesson taught with humor and grace.
Penetrating the secrets of the Kremlin through delightful chronicles of the long-suffering chefs who catered to Russian leaders.
In an original work of social history, Polish journalist Szabłowski, the author of How To Feed a Dictator and Dancing Bears, alternates narrative with interviews (and recipes) to delve into some recondite and often apocryphal stories of the people who cooked for the Russian elite, from Ivan Kharitonov, the chef executed with Tsar Nicholas II in 1918; to Polina Ivanovna, who cooked “the Soviet Union’s last supper.” What the author learned can be summed up in two sentences of Russian propaganda: “It doesn’t matter if a story is true. What matters is that people believe it.” Case in point: Vladimir Putin’s grandfather, Spirodin, cooked in various Russian sanitoriums, but claiming that he served Russian leaders from Rasputin to Stalin was great propaganda when Putin was campaigning for office. Over years, Szabłowski has tracked down many of his elusive subjects, and he tells a wide variety of entertaining stories about this colorful cast of characters, including longtime Kremlin chef Viltor Belyaev, who relates detailed, chilling, and priceless stories about cooking for Brezhnev and Gorbachev; the devoted cook who created food in tubes for cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin’s mission to space in 1961; and the doomed kitchen staff assembled for the clean-up crew after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. The author includes horrific eyewitness accounts of Ukrainians surviving the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933 (“Every seven minutes someone in Ukraine died of starvation”), as well as those who suffered during the two-year German siege of Leningrad. Szabłowski also relates the saga of the intrepid “Mama Nina,” who cooked for a Soviet airbase in Afghanistan, with little understanding of the nature of the war. The author closes with a poignant, timely look at the tenuous culinary culture of the Tatars, who were nearly eliminated from Crimea.
A bitter history lesson taught with humor and grace.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2023
ISBN: 9780143137184
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Penguin
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.
The Top Chef host describes her journey to new heights.
For those who don’t know, Kish is a “gay Korean adopted woman, born in Seoul, raised in Michigan” and “a chef, a character, a host, and a cultural communicator—as well as a human being with a beating heart.” Though this book covers every step of her journey, every restaurant job and television role, and also discusses her experience as an adoptee (very positive) and a queer woman (late bloomer), the storytelling is so straightforward, lacking in suspense, character development, or dialogue, that it is basically a long version of its (longish) “About the Author.” Seemingly dramatic situations are not dramatized—when she was eliminated on her first Top Chef run, she assures us that she did the best she could, and drops it. “I can spare you the gory details (bouillabaisse and big personalities were involved).” Later, she cites a belief in protecting the privacy of others to omit the story of her first relationship with a woman. With no character development, neither does the reader get to know those who fall outside the privacy zone, like her best friend, Steph, and her wife, Bianca. When she gets mad, she says things like, “It’s a gross understatement to say I was crushed, beyond frustrated, and furious with the situation.” The fact that “I’ve never been a big reader” does not come as a surprise. It is more surprising when she confesses that “I believe the universe is selective about the moments in which it introduces life-changing prospects.”
Top Chef fans might savor this detailed account, but others will find it bland.Pub Date: April 22, 2025
ISBN: 9780316580915
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2025
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.
A charming bird journey with the bestselling author.
In his introduction to Tan’s “nature journal,” David Allen Sibley, the acclaimed ornithologist, nails the spirit of this book: a “collection of delightfully quirky, thoughtful, and personal observations of birds in sketches and words.” For years, Tan has looked out on her California backyard “paradise”—oaks, periwinkle vines, birch, Japanese maple, fuchsia shrubs—observing more than 60 species of birds, and she fashions her findings into delightful and approachable journal excerpts, accompanied by her gorgeous color sketches. As the entries—“a record of my life”—move along, the author becomes more adept at identifying and capturing them with words and pencils. Her first entry is September 16, 2017: Shortly after putting up hummingbird feeders, one of the tiny, delicate creatures landed on her hand and fed. “We have a relationship,” she writes. “I am in love.” By August 2018, her backyard “has become a menagerie of fledglings…all learning to fly.” Day by day, she has continued to learn more about the birds, their activities, and how she should relate to them; she also admits mistakes when they occur. In December 2018, she was excited to observe a Townsend’s Warbler—“Omigod! It’s looking at me. Displeased expression.” Battling pesky squirrels, Tan deployed Hot Pepper Suet to keep them away, and she deterred crows by hanging a fake one upside down. The author also declared war on outdoor cats when she learned they kill more than 1 billion birds per year. In May 2019, she notes that she spends $250 per month on beetle larvae. In June 2019, she confesses “spending more hours a day staring at birds than writing. How can I not?” Her last entry, on December 15, 2022, celebrates when an eating bird pauses, “looks and acknowledges I am there.”
An ebullient nature lover’s paean to birds.Pub Date: April 23, 2024
ISBN: 9780593536131
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 19, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
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