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The Seaside Café Metropolis
In this comic Cold War novel, Canadian restaurateur Emmet Argentine is trapped in Khrushchev-era Vilnius, Lithuania, under the tyranny of two equally formidable 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.
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.
294 pages, Paperback
Published September 27, 2025
10 people are currently reading
49 people want to read
About the author
Antanas Šileika
13 books45 followersAntanas Sileika (Antanas Šileika) is a Canadian novelist and critic of Lithuanian-born parents.
After completing an English degree at the University of Toronto, he moved to Paris for two years and there married his wife, Snaige Sileika (née Valiunas), an art student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While in Paris, he studied French, taught English in Versailles, and worked as part of the editorial collective of the expatriate literary journal, Paris Voices, run from the upstairs room of the bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.
Upon his return to Canada in 1979, Antanas began teaching at Humber College and working as a co-editor of the Canadian literary journal, Descant, where he remained until 1988.
After writing for newspapers and magazines, Antanas Sileika published his first novel, Dinner at the End of the World (1994), a speculative story set in the aftermath of global warming.
His second book, a collection of linked short stories, Buying On Time (1997) was nominated for both the City of Toronto Book Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and was serialized on CBC Radio's Between the Covers. The book traces the lives of a family of immigrants to a Canadian suburb between the fifties and seventies. Some of these stories were anthologized in Dreaming Home, Canadian Short Stories, and the Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour.
Antanas Sileika appears occasionally on Canadian television and radio as a free-lance broadcaster.
His third book, Woman in Bronze (2004), compared the seasonal life of a young man in Czarist Lithuania with his subsequent attempts to succeed as a prominent sculptor in Paris in the twenties.
His latest novel, Underground was released by Thomas Allen & Son in spring of 2011. The new novel is a love story set in the underground resistance to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.
He is the director for the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, Canada, and is a past winner of a National Magazine Award.
After completing an English degree at the University of Toronto, he moved to Paris for two years and there married his wife, Snaige Sileika (née Valiunas), an art student at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. While in Paris, he studied French, taught English in Versailles, and worked as part of the editorial collective of the expatriate literary journal, Paris Voices, run from the upstairs room of the bookstore, Shakespeare and Company.
Upon his return to Canada in 1979, Antanas began teaching at Humber College and working as a co-editor of the Canadian literary journal, Descant, where he remained until 1988.
After writing for newspapers and magazines, Antanas Sileika published his first novel, Dinner at the End of the World (1994), a speculative story set in the aftermath of global warming.
His second book, a collection of linked short stories, Buying On Time (1997) was nominated for both the City of Toronto Book Award and the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour, and was serialized on CBC Radio's Between the Covers. The book traces the lives of a family of immigrants to a Canadian suburb between the fifties and seventies. Some of these stories were anthologized in Dreaming Home, Canadian Short Stories, and the Penguin Anthology of Canadian Humour.
Antanas Sileika appears occasionally on Canadian television and radio as a free-lance broadcaster.
His third book, Woman in Bronze (2004), compared the seasonal life of a young man in Czarist Lithuania with his subsequent attempts to succeed as a prominent sculptor in Paris in the twenties.
His latest novel, Underground was released by Thomas Allen & Son in spring of 2011. The new novel is a love story set in the underground resistance to the Soviet Union in the late 1940s.
He is the director for the Humber School for Writers in Toronto, Canada, and is a past winner of a National Magazine Award.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 19, 2025
Aside from the stellar prose and fully-filled characterizations I recommend this book to anyone seeking a sense of what it was like to live under the bureaucratic-totalitarian yoke of Soviet supervision. Emmet is an expert restaurateur compelled by his mother, a dedicated communist acolyte, to pull up stakes in Toronto and move to Cold War era Vilnius to moil in the great Marxist experiment.
The book tours through the oddness of Iron Curtain quasi-imitating Western life while humorously illustrating the delicate fine line everyone must walk to get along and not offend party officials of every different sort. There is a painful aspect to reading this book. The sustained strain of thinking one thing but saying another. The clear knowledge of a superior's inferior competence, kept quiet and nurtured through lies. Such a crazy-making culture, endured for so many decades by otherwise fine and industrious people trapped in an idealist-turned-ugly authoritarian nightmare.
I congratulate Antanas Šileika for bringing this widely experienced and yet still only vaguely known epoch to fictional life. The humour and pain are a remarkable mix.
The book tours through the oddness of Iron Curtain quasi-imitating Western life while humorously illustrating the delicate fine line everyone must walk to get along and not offend party officials of every different sort. There is a painful aspect to reading this book. The sustained strain of thinking one thing but saying another. The clear knowledge of a superior's inferior competence, kept quiet and nurtured through lies. Such a crazy-making culture, endured for so many decades by otherwise fine and industrious people trapped in an idealist-turned-ugly authoritarian nightmare.
I congratulate Antanas Šileika for bringing this widely experienced and yet still only vaguely known epoch to fictional life. The humour and pain are a remarkable mix.
December 15, 2025
This freezing weekend was the perfect excuse to hunker down with a good book and Antanas Sileika's, darkly comic new novel set in Khrushchev-era Vilnius, Lithuania, did not disappoint.
This passage, on the scarcity of smiling faces in the city, made me laugh out loud:
“Have you seen people smile here?”
“What? Of course I have.”
“Yes, but not in the way they smile in American movies. I mean commonly, to strangers on the street. In photos. From over here, all these smiling faces look moronic. Here, you smile at friends, not at strangers. If you do, they think you have something wrong with you. Perhaps you are weak, or have a mental defect. People admire strength here, and so you have to demonstrate your strength from time to time by terrorizing people.”
Ah. That explains why people have always commented that I don't smile a lot—perhaps it's just my Slavic DNA quietly setting my features into permanent resting bitch face.
That said, there’s much to smile about in this wise, droll novel. Set largely in a Western-style restaurant, it features a colourful cast of Iron Curtain bohemians: writers and philosophers, not-so-secret KGB operatives, a fiercely socialist mother, and a Canadian transplant restaurateur determined to create a small oasis of culture under a repressive regime—with good food, good company, sharp wit, poetry, and plenty of Western-style jazz.
Each chapter even includes a Lithuanian recipe—many potato-based (Zeppelins, Mushroom Trumpets)—a loving nod to a beloved national staple during times of chronic shortages.
If you’re looking for a novel that is sad, funny, and insightful—one that finds hope in an era when much seemed hopeless—I highly recommend it.
This passage, on the scarcity of smiling faces in the city, made me laugh out loud:
“Have you seen people smile here?”
“What? Of course I have.”
“Yes, but not in the way they smile in American movies. I mean commonly, to strangers on the street. In photos. From over here, all these smiling faces look moronic. Here, you smile at friends, not at strangers. If you do, they think you have something wrong with you. Perhaps you are weak, or have a mental defect. People admire strength here, and so you have to demonstrate your strength from time to time by terrorizing people.”
Ah. That explains why people have always commented that I don't smile a lot—perhaps it's just my Slavic DNA quietly setting my features into permanent resting bitch face.
That said, there’s much to smile about in this wise, droll novel. Set largely in a Western-style restaurant, it features a colourful cast of Iron Curtain bohemians: writers and philosophers, not-so-secret KGB operatives, a fiercely socialist mother, and a Canadian transplant restaurateur determined to create a small oasis of culture under a repressive regime—with good food, good company, sharp wit, poetry, and plenty of Western-style jazz.
Each chapter even includes a Lithuanian recipe—many potato-based (Zeppelins, Mushroom Trumpets)—a loving nod to a beloved national staple during times of chronic shortages.
If you’re looking for a novel that is sad, funny, and insightful—one that finds hope in an era when much seemed hopeless—I highly recommend it.
December 14, 2025
The Seaside Cafe Metropolis is a droll commentary on Soviet-occupied Vilnius, during the Khrushchev era. The reader is introduced to Emmet Augustine. He is a Canadian who follows his communist loving mother to Vilnius, Lithuania, to protect her from harm. While there, a powerful Soviet bureaucrat decides to improve the Soviet Union's image by establishing a Western-style cafe in Vilnius. Because Emmet has worked in the Imperial Room of Toronto's Royal York Hotel, he is asked to serve as the Manager of this establishment, which is called "The Seaside Cafe Metropolis," even though it is not near the Sea and Vilnius is a small city, not a metropolis. Emmet accepts the offer and uses his culinary and customer service skills to create an oasis for its clients and staff from the boring and cruel communist regime that occupied Lithuania at the time.
Antanas Silieka does an excellent job of bringing Emmet, his mother, and his staff to life as they navigate the hypocrisy of what the Soviets wish to portray and the reality of life in an occupied nation. The author uses actual Lithuanian cuisine as a metaphor in each chapter and even includes recipes for each dish. If you are looking for a humorous satire of the Soviet Union's failed attempts to
embrace occupied countries to their cause, this is the book for you. I thoroughly recommend this novel for your education and your pleasure.
Antanas Silieka does an excellent job of bringing Emmet, his mother, and his staff to life as they navigate the hypocrisy of what the Soviets wish to portray and the reality of life in an occupied nation. The author uses actual Lithuanian cuisine as a metaphor in each chapter and even includes recipes for each dish. If you are looking for a humorous satire of the Soviet Union's failed attempts to
embrace occupied countries to their cause, this is the book for you. I thoroughly recommend this novel for your education and your pleasure.
December 24, 2025
A comic cold war novel. Canadian restauranteur Emmet Argentine follows communist enthusiast Mom to Vilnius Lithuania were he ends up running the Metropolis -- attracting artists, writers and some government officials. He makes a life for himself between forces of the Soviet Union and his "family" of workers at the restaurant. Each chapter ends with a recipe. A fun read.
January 7, 2026
A lighthearted novel set in dark times, the Seaside Metropolis Café is well worth a read. The novel features a wide variety of memorable characters fulfilling their individual passions and finding love and joy despite political repression, privation, and uncertainty.
Read
October 13, 2025Sadly I just could not get into this one… just wasn’t striking the right note(s) for me.
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.
DNF
Thanks to the publisher and Edelweiss for granting me access to an early digital review copy.
DNF
December 20, 2025
A delight! Funny, interesting and includes recipes with humorous comments.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews