“Somebody in Bristol started making a vodka called Novichok,” said our host, Natasha Ward, faux-scandalized at the reference to the toxic nerve agent. “And they were immediately told, ‘Stop it at once!’” She laughed as she finished setting the table for the day’s gathering in her home in South London, introducing the dishes as one might introduce guests at a party. “We start with herring, salted, not pickled – English people hate beetroot because they’ve only ever met it in this horrible vinegar, and those rollmop herrings that look like corpses, you know?”
BBC: Russia’s strange bread-sniffing ritual
A man places a slice of bread on a plastic cup with vodka outside the French embassy in Moscow on November 14, 2015, to pay tribute to the victims of the deadly attacks in Paris. A wave of coordinated attacks left more than 120 dead in scenes of carnage in Paris Friday, including scores massacred by attackers shouting "Allahu akbar" during a rock concert and others in a suicide bombing near the national stadium.
