“This is a rare dish served by a master chef.” TAMAS DOBOZY

In this comic Cold War novel, Canadian restaurateur Emmet Argentine is trapped in Khrushchev-era Vilnius, Lithuania, under the tyranny of two equally formi-dable forces: the Soviet Union, and his staunchly socialist mother.

Raised in the kitchens of Toronto’s Royal York Hotel, Emmet’s got a talent for hospitality that catches the attention of a high-ranking architect, who hires him to helm a magnificent new restaurant. Under Emmet’s direction, the Seaside Café Metropolis, though located neither by the sea nor in a major metropolitan area, attracts a colourful cast of bohemian artists, writers, and philosophers, including a visit from Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir — all while KGB operatives listen in from the basement via microphones in the bread baskets.

Through guile, wit, and charm, Emmet, his staff, and other restaurant regulars strive to make rich lives for themselves in the heart of the repressive Soviet regime, drawing warmth from good food, good humour, and even better company.

“Antanas Sileika has invented a new genre: the culinary picaresque. Throw in the Cold War, dissident shenanigans, an ideologue mother, knife-fighting love story, iron curtain Bohemians, and more than half a dozen traditional and innovative Lithuanian recipes and you get a sense of the many flavors Sileika blends to perfection in this sad, funny, insightful, propulsive banquet of a novel. This is a rare dish served by a master chef.” —Tamas Dobozy, author of the Governor General’s Award–shortlisted and Writer’s Trust Fiction Prize-winning Siege 13

“A delicious peek into the world of spies, artists and food at the fringes of the Soviet Union. Sileika’s prose is wry and wise, and conjures up a place and time that glimmers like a bittersweet memory.” —Trevor Cole, author of Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour-winning Practical Jean

“Antanas Sileika is a born storyteller. He turns the postwar Vilnius café of the title, with the Soviet menace all around it and even in it, into an oasis of civility — good food, good music, good wit, good poetry and, above all, hope — hope for better days to come. Stories flow through the café, even if they are sad or tragic, like a cleansing river.” —Joe Kertes, Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour-winning Winter Tulips, and Canadian National Jewish Book Award and U.S. National Jewish Book Award for Fiction–winning Gratitude