That sounds extremely useful!  I had a helluva time telling the difference between bars and restruants late at night, maybe there is some secret to it! 
 
I’ve got the Let’s Go EE, but it only includes a few cities, and there isn’t much detail on them.  I think I’ll get that book first, then maybe I’ll go for the Brandt guide later. 

I knew absolutely no Russian or Ukrainian.  I managed to figure out the Cyrillic alphabet from my can-read-a-fraternity-sweatshirt knowledge of the Greek alphabet (which proved pretty much useless in Greece).  After that I could sound out street signs, town names, advertising signs, etc. and felt like I could “read” at about a 1st grade level.  I never did pick up the spoken language nor could I read anything in handwriting as opposed to printing.  Many restaurants had an English menu, but often no one who spoke English, so there was a lot of pointing at the English menu while somebody tried to match that to an item on the Russian or Ukrainian menu.  However, we figured “kabob” “cutlet” “greek salad” “coca cola” and “soo-lan-ka” (hearty 3 meat soup) “sash-leek” (fabulous barbiqued meat) would get you by for a month.  We wrote out the grocery list from the guidebook and just handed it to the various clerks in the market.