As Saddam Hussein languishes in US custody, the glory years live on for his fish chef, Ayyub al-Obeidi, who catered for Iraq's top dignitaries and his personal favourite, the strongman's son Qusay.
"Among my customers were Saddam, his wife Sajida, their children and all the regime's ministers and chief officials," says 64-year-old Obeidi, sipping tea in his restaurant in Abu Nawwas Street.
"Saddam loved my fish. He used to send his guards to order from me two or three times a week. The last time was two months before the regime fell," in April 2003, he adds, fixing his eyes on the Tigris River outside.
"Once, his most faithful bodyguard asked for 20 huge fish for the following morning, without giving any details," he recalls.
"At the appointed time, a car came to take me to Mosul where the leader was receiving local dignitaries. Saddam, who only liked little fish, didn't touch them but was careful telling me off," he adds.
Mosul is a four-hour drive north of Baghdad.
"But my favourite was Qusay. No one knew fish like him. He was a gourmet and came here to eat masguf," a Baghdadi speciality grilled on a wood fire.
"When the Americans killed him with his older brother Uday" in a blistering July gun battle in Mosul, "people said the remains shown on television weren't him, but I knew it was," he said.
Obeidi, who admits he is illiterate, is free with his memories, but gets tangled up in his dates.
"You know, I have been a fish chef for 47 years and there are so many stories, but I can say without hesitation that the seventies were the best".
The economy was booming, Saddam took power in 1979 and the bloody wars in which he engulfed Iraq were still to come.
"Besides Iraqi officials, I had official foreign delegations," he recalls, is stomach bulging over his waist line.
Once he was summoned to Awjah, the northern village where Saddam was born, to cook masguf for Sajida and Queen Noor of Jordan, the wife of the late king Hussein, when the royal couple visited Iraq in 1989.
But his most vivid memory is a feast in honour of the leader of the Russian ultra-nationalist LDPR party and vice president of the Duma, Vladimir Zhirinovsky.
"It was Saddam Hussein's birthday and the foreign minister asked me to organise a special evening," he says.
"There was a belly dancer and an orchestra and the evening went on a long time. He (Zhirinovsky) celebrated like a lord," he says, grinning under his greying moustache.
In January, the Iraqi Al-Mada newspaper included Zhirinovsky on a list of some 200 foreign dignitaries and associations who it said received millions of barrels of oil in exchange for supporting Saddam's regime.
The Russian political heavyweight, who enjoyed close relations wtih former Iraqi officials and visited Baghdad regularly, fervently denied the claim.
Done with his memories and casting his eyes around his empty restaurant, Obeidi, ever the pragmatic businessman looks to the future.
"I hope Iraq's new leaders will end up coming here, like those from the old regime".
Blair blasts Britons over Iraq war