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No one can accuse my dad of doing anything half-heartedly. If we were in Baku, the caviar capital of the world, we were getting caviar. If we were getting caviar, we were getting real caviar. That logic landed my dad, mom, sister, and me in the backseat of a London-style cab as it sped along the Caspian Coast to the local market. My dad had done his research. A morning on the internet and a conversation with the hotel clerk taught him a few things. One, go to Yashil Bazaar. Two, the eggs must be a gray/black color–anything green was fake. Three, try not to get ripped off. Our cabbie overheard my dad summarizing his knowledge. He piped up that his friend sold the best caviar–real beluga sturgeon just like the tsars ate. He swore to take us directly there. Suspicious, we silently agreed. The cabbie stopped his car and enthusiastically led us through a narrow alley and down an even narrower set of stairs to a creaky, worn door that swung open and justified our misgivings. The dilapidated trailer held a couple of chairs and a counter covered in fish, a pungent fact we discerned immediately. The vendor urged us to try some of his bright green roe from a styrofoam box. Instead, as the family interpreter, I excused us with a quick goodbye in my broken Russian. Once in the fresh air of the market, we split up. My mom and sister went to find sumac, a tart spice we’d fallen in love with the night before. My dad and I set off to find caviar. We found a tin that was up to his standards (and refrigerated) and went to rejoin the party. As we walked through the bazaar, we heard my sister’s laugh. She and my mom hadn’t moved from the first vendor they’d visited. As the family gathered, the spice seller poured us drinks and offered generous bites of tangerines. He then returned to what had made my sister laugh–overfilling a small bag with crimson-colored sumac. They’d already paid, but he wanted her to have a bit more because she was visiting from so far away. When I explained my dad’s quest for caviar had brought us to the market, he jumped up and knocked on the door of his friend’s stall across the way. This little stall was also a trailer, but one with a couch, coffee table, fridge, and samovar. When we walked in, the spice vendor started to make a pot of tea while his friend offered samples of caviar. Two quick tastes were all it took for my dad to realize this was the best we’d seen all day. He got a tin immediately. We then spent the next hour sitting on their couch with jam-sweetened tea in tulip-shaped glasses and little Azeri candies. We got by on my raggedy translating except when our hosts tried to explain what fruit was in the jam. The caviar vendor called his niece, who studied in America, to solve the mystery: cornelian cherry. Over two pots of tea, we talked about life as bazaar vendors. They said it was good and bad. If you could sell caviar, it was okay. You made enough money to possibly retire one day. For a spice seller, it was harder. There was no way to advance and no way to retire. Our new friend–who generously shared his goods with us–said the work was fine, and he liked the market, but, he asked, what sort of life is it to never be able to stop working? That, he explained, was why he liked it when people from far off came to his stall. It meant he could teach us a bit about his life in Azerbaijan, and he could learn a bit about ours. For all my dad’s research, he missed one critical fact: Beluga caviar is banned in the US–it would never get to our friends at home. So, the next morning, from our hotel overlooking the blue of the Caspian Sea, we opened a bottle of sparkling wine, made toast points, and popped open the finest caviar we’ll ever enjoy.