Here, the best includes soft-textured, lightly smoked sturgeon ($12.25 a quarter pound) and silky sable ($7.50 a quarter), more assertive than the sturgeon, yet still gently flavored.

Entrees include Ukrainian borscht made with beets, braised duck, smoked pork loin and beef brisket, and grilled sturgeon with horseradish sauce and accompaniment of braised carrot and chanterelles.

Delicacies like caviar, lobster, smoked sturgeon, roast rack of veal and zuccotto, an Italian chestnut cake, will be on the menu.

In Lithuania, a film director bravely entertained me with vodka, smoked sturgeon and tales of Soviet censorship.

Russ & Daughters will ship anywhere in the United States, so that New York hors d'oeuvres platters of chopped liver, herring, smoked salmon, smoked sturgeon and black cod can be assembled in all 50 states.

Alcohol flowed, and the food was abundant: caviar, black bread and butter, smoked sturgeon.

Matt Weingarten, chef de cuisine at Savoy in SoHo, brines then smokes sturgeon with juniper branches and berries.

The best appetizer was smoked sturgeon, painted with crème fraîche, showered with sharp arugula and springy frisée, and placed over a slightly oily, very crunchy potato galette.

The tidbit might be smoked sturgeon with a dab of mustardy remoulade sauce, tender calamari marinated in a confetti of sweet red peppers vinaigrette or ceviche of tuna and swordfish tossed with crunchy cucumber, onion and red pepper.

He favors seasonings like wild ginger and wild leeks, and he smokes sturgeon and other Lake Superior fish.