Quote Originally Posted by Basil77 View Post
Let me guess, did this incident happened in 1989-1999 decade? If so, I could explain the trick. I guess as a foreigner and TV journalist you used to eat at private restaurants and so. The owners of these places prefered to bribe sanitary autorities and do their buisness as they want. At the same times I used to eat at my school cafeteria, uni cafeteria, factory where I worked etc. and never saw a cockroach there. These placeses were still working by USSR standarts and since they were still state-owned they couldn't bribe a sanitary inspectors. In the 2000s these places (I mean state owned places where you could get a dinner) almost died out (with some exceptions, some are still working). I remember when I was asked to do some ingineering work in "super cool" restaurant called " Pirosmani" owned by some Georgian mafia boss in 1999. It was located in a place in Moscow covered by tourists, owner showed me pictures of Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin having a dinner there with their signatures and words of gratitude and so. But when I visited the kitchen it was swarming with cockroaches. In 90s in Russia cockroaches were rather sign of a "cool" restaurant because the owner could say to "fvck of" to sanitary inspectors. The ordinary places had to be sterile or be closed by authorities.
Nope. As a matter of fact, I worked за рубли and so actually it was very rare that we went out to the expensive, private restaurants and I only ate at the Astoria one time. More frequently I ate with my Russian colleagues at the commissary на телевидение, and that was where I found the cockroach. I guess that the cooks there either gave the inspectors the фиг в кармане or they just didn't care.