In which we will consider Moscow, mediocrity and exhorbitant salaries...

OK. It has been a while and I need to think about some things so I thought that I would try them out here first. First of all I have been asked to put together a proposal to consult on what might be the most expensive restaurant in Moscow. It is called "The Most" or in Russian "Moct" which actually means bridge but, of course, as you have figured out already, has other connotations as well. It is a restaurant on Kuznetsky Moct in the center of Moscow. I do have a little photo for you...

Yes, I know, lovely place. Really quite cool with all of that Guilded Age elegance, Gold Leaf and fussy-yet-comfortable chairs. But, they did what restaurant owners in Moscow always do--hired a French Chef. Now I don't want to be taken wrong here but with a few notable exceptions French Chefs are an arrogant disaster. For example if you check out what is considered a good authortiy on the, arguably, 50 Best Restaurants in the world, http://www.theworlds50best.com/2007_list.html, only 2 of the top ten are in France. This is a big change and one that a lot of people really are behind the times on. I think that there was a time in not so distant past when it would not have been surprising to find 5 or even more restaurants in France being considered "the best in the world", !!!!!!!!!!!!, with of course all the attendant fanfare. Not so any more. And the two that make it are Pierre Gagnaire and Michel Bras, no spring chickens in the kitchen and they are two of the only French Chefs to really embrace "newness", sorry it is the best way that I can describe it.

Now, let me say that French Chefs do really well prepared food. But, god, isn't it time that they expanded the repertoire to include a little more than Tournedos of Beef, you know a filet mignon cut in half and pan seared, with Bernaise Sauce? No kidding. That is on the menu and it comes in at a whopping $55. for 170g. Small and boring. And remember the Raspberry Vinaigrette that was so popular in about 1985? That makes an appearance as well. How about this: 5-Spice Duck Breast, now come on, really, they could do better than that but my point is, THEY DON'T! And I will never understand that. In the USA, the UK, Spain especially, a chef needs to say that they were classically trained to be taken seriously at all. Then, to be successful, a chef needs to forget all that and forge a new path to glory. If you can't put a Seaweed Gelee on a Koumomoto Oyster, which by the way is NOT classical french, you really are getting nowhere in this business. See, learn, manipulate and do something new. Which, to my mind, is the job of a great chef. French Chefs tend to think that because they were washing dishes in the hot back of a filthy restaurant when they were 15 years old that by the time they are 35 or 40 the whole world should be saying "magnifique!!!" with every bite. Even when you have just eaten beef with bernaise sauce preceeded by a lovely salad of spinach with a raspberry vinaigrette.

Now, you may be asking yourself what is wrong with this guy? Why does he hate the french so much? I don't. Let me put that to bed right now. It is all about creativity. And the squandering of talent and, most important, what I call "The Great French Con Job". These guys, and I say guys because my experience is that French Women Chefs DO try harder, these guys are conning restaurant owners out of a lot of money and doing dishes that they have been doing for years and could do in their sleep and asking for huge salaries for it. That to me is a con job.

What Makes A Restaurant Great?

So, I got worried for a moment that my investor got cold feet. It turns out that he has been out of town and this week approached the owner of the place I want to buy in Russia. What is this place you ask?

It is a restaurant that I spent one whole year planning. I did a lot of sitting on my butt in St. Petersburg waiting for this place. Planning menus and designing the kitchen, service systems, et. al. Then we opened and the Shit-Hit-the-Fan as the saying goes.

My lesson here is to always remember the cardinal rules of the restaurant business:

1. A sucessful restaurant does not indicate that it is run by people who know how to run a restaurant. This is more true than anyone not in the business can understand, I think. A sucessful restaurant is difficult, if not impossible, to categorize. The best example I can think of is to ask you to remember that place that is packed with customers but completely baffles you when you really look at what they serve, the atmosphere, whatever...

Then, more often than not, there is a place very close by, often times next door that is hands down more creative, better food, etc. and it is a desserted wasteland on the verge of closing. Most people have seen that place I think.

Restaurant owners are a special breed. Those that really luck into success are special in a different way. They tend, ultimately, to believe their own hype and that is the beginning of their downfall. What they should do, and this is my advice, collect the profits and go on your next vacation and leave the work to the professionals. And that is what happened to me at this place, which for a little while longer shall remain nameless. ( I have become superstitious in my headlong-surge-to-buy-this-wacky-place and I think if I write it down it will never happen.) Suddenly an "Owner" became an "Idea Person", mostly because the money guys started breathing down his neck because his laziness really set the place back. Now, an owner that does not work in the restaurnt 24/7 rarely has any good ideas. (Sorry, guys, but that is the truth and your upper staff spends the time that you do spend in your own restaurant trying desperatel to save you from yourself.) And then when the money guys start going at him/her he starts pushing for things 5 minutes before they are ready, that, my friends, is the beginning of the end.
Anyway, my old job, which again is the place I am trying to buy, seats about 85 guests, has 4 owners, three of whom put up the money and one, the problem, who is the "creative" type that is supposedly the Operating Partner. Well, first, he is inherently lazy. Which I have known for years (I will say here that I have worked for this man for 5 years) and is really not a problem until he comes in with ideas. This is the problem as I stated above: there are two types of successful restaurant owners, first the kind that can spot and hire talent then leave them alone and second, the worker owner, who is usually but not always, a chef. My "owner" was neither. He was, by his own admission merely lucky. I recently said to him that he was the most successful restauranteur in St. Petersburg. And, this is gospel truth, he said to me, in a moment of uncharacteristic candor, that he was not a restauranteur that he was lucky with other peoples money. (Then in a subsequent conversation started to say that he was a restauranteur. But, that is a whole other blog about believing your own hype.)

Anyway, I had to leave because I have ambitions, as you can see, to own my own place in Russia and the only thing that will make that happen is my reputation. I could not let that go down the drain.

2. Never believe your own press. This is the biggy. You are only as good as your last dish. And, that is a fact that many restaurant owners and chefs forget. Which, by the way is the reason I love Wolfgang Puck. That is a restauranteur that works. And, I mean hard. If I try to emulate anyone it is him. Now, I do not copy his food. In fact I have a very extensive collection of cookbooks and I do not even own one of his. I did once and found the recipes unremarkable. But, as a restauranteur I do believe this man is unsurpassed in America. And that is because he does the third cardinal rule better than anyone, I think...

3. Know your clientele and give them what they want. If your guests wanted to go to cooking school they would. It is that simple. People go to restaurants for a couple of different reasons and school is not one of them. This is the reason that a few "Top Chefs" will always do lukewarm business. They are so impressed with themselves or calcium alginate that they forget that their guest came to eat. Now I love that food and do a bit of it myself but there are limits and, actually, when I go to a restaurant it is because I want to go to school. Most people that are devoted to the food of Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria will go to The Fat Duck or el Bulli, everyone else wants either one of three things:

1. To eat. They are just plain hungry.

2. To be seen in a fashionable environment.

3. To not have to do the dishes

ahhh, Florida.........

..............well, here I sit in Florida. Trying to get a place open via e-mail is not as easy as it may sound. Although, it has made me think again about what the world was really like before e-mail and fax machines. And, it really wasn't all that long ago.

So, where do we stand with the restaurant? I told all the dirt on the principals that I knew to my investor. Told him what to offer and more important to whom to offer it. It is all this politics which I am surprisingly good at but hate so much. All the reasons that I do not now and never have worked in an office in my life (except for about a month, fresh out of college, and boy was it miserable). I am a chef. An artist? Maybe. A worker? Certainly. An owner? I really hope.

The photos are Fresh Escargots Wrapped in Herb Printed Pasta with a Fresh Basil Pesto Mousseline. I love the earthiness of Snails. Oysters from Brittany in France and Sushi, which I am sick to death of but you cannot have a restaurant in St. Petersburg without it. Ugh.

So, here I am in Florida and my investor just gave me the go on the restaurant that I have been trying to get open all of my adult life. I am ready for all the questions. What kind of food? How expensive will it be? What is your best dish? What is your favorite food? Have you been in Russia long? What is it like in a communist country? Isn't it dangerous? (The restaurant business is dangerous anywhere, actually.) Oh, the list just goes on and on. But this will be a blog that I hope will chronicle the process, for myself as well as anyone who reads it.

But, my confession is that the restaurant is not from the ground up, as the term would have you think. I am in the process of buying the restaurant that I created for someone else and they have let go to pieces. It's a personal thing....