Menu for Dinner Hosted by President Nixon at Spaso House

This menu was created for a dinner hosted by President Richard M. Nixon and First Lady Pat Nixon in honor of leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) on May 26, 1972. The dinner was held in the ballroom of Spaso House, the residence of the United States ambassador to the Soviet Union, in Moscow. Prominent guests at the dinner included Leonid Il'ich Brezhnev, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union; Aleksey Nikolayevich Kosygin, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR; and Nikolaĭ Podgornyĭ, chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR. This dinner was held as part of the Moscow Summit of 1972, during which President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev negotiated environmental, technological, and nuclear policies despite Cold War tensions between their countries. After the dinner, President Nixon and General Secretary Brezhnev went to the Kremlin Palace and signed the first Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) agreement, which controlled the number of missile each country could possess. This menu is part of a personal collection belonging to former White House Executive Chef Henry Haller. Haller served as executive chef from 1966-1987.