MOSCOW — In 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed around him, Alexander Mishakov, 24, was summoned to a place that was off-limits to most citizens — the Metropol Hotel.
Newly graduated from a technical institute, he had scored an interview for a breakfast chef position. Catching the first morning train into Moscow, he walked through the hotel’s grand entrance and into a sphere of unimagined elegance. At the time, the hotel was open only to foreign guests and a privileged echelon of the Soviet elite.
“I will never forget my first impression walking into that magnificent dining hall,” said Mishakov, now the hotel’s head chef. “I had never seen anything like it.”
Today, anyone can walk in and be stunned by the restaurant’s Art Nouveau stained-glass dome, chandeliers and marble fountain.
The Metropol, which opened in 1905, has borne witness to some of Moscow’s most dramatic chapters. It has seen glamour, revolution and espionage; gangsters and celebrities.
In its earliest days, Russia’s czarist elites swept through the Metropol’s gilded halls. Artists, ballerinas and intellectuals toasted the greatness of Imperial Russia under the crystal chandeliers. Fish swam in the fountain at the center of the great dining hall — and would then be served for supper. Rasputin held his infamous parties behind the hotel’s doors. And when Czar Nicholas II signed a manifesto promising liberal reforms, opera singer Fyodor Chaliapin got up on a table, sang folk songs and passed around his hat asking for contributions for workers.
When the Bolshevik Revolution swept across Russia, the hotel became a barracks for the anti-Bolshevik White Army, then was captured and turned into Bolshevik headquarters. The dining tables and chandeliers were replaced by simple wooden benches and kerosene lamps.
Revolutionary leaders congregated in the now-darkened restaurant. Luxury suites were converted into committee meeting rooms. The once-polished floors became filthy with grit and tobacco. Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky and other Bolshevik leaders gave speeches there.
In the 1930s, the Politburo recognized the need to form stronger ties with the capitalist world. Foreign visitors were allowed in again, albeit under strict conditions. The Metropol was reopened as a hotel in 1931 and, as one of the best in Russia, became an important part of the state propaganda machine.
Foreign guests slept in plush, spacious rooms, ate well, and were told about the wonders of Soviet industry and agriculture. Visits were tightly controlled by the KGB; visitors were not allowed to move freely, and guides from the state travel agency Intourist were never permitted to go off-script. Any communication with foreigners was dangerous.
During this period, Communist sympathizers, writers and journalists flocked to the Metropol.
As the Soviet Union, with its shortages and endless food queues, came crashing down, a rush of high-quality foreign foods and commercial goods flooded into the new Russia of the 1990s, and into the Metropol.
The hotel began receiving two truckloads of food twice a month: high-quality meats, yogurts, avocados, cheeses and exotic fruit.
“It opened up a whole new world of cooking,” Mishakov said.
And the Metropol, across the street from the Bolshoi Theater and 500 meters from Red Square, also became a favorite with world leaders and celebrities, from Michael Jackson to Elton John.
