Andriy ZADOR OZHNY: Restaurant is a Small Model of Life

Andriy Zadorozhny is one of the owners of a well-known Kyiv chain of restaurants, including the Dejа Vu, Chateau de Fleur, and Khutorok. He is 34 and a big man, charming, seems to know all the answers, and speaks in a low baritone. Dejа Vu boasts an exotic interior: gear wheels, rare motorcycle models, upturned boats, and seashells. It is a good illustration of business success. As are the two-digit prices in the menu. Yet this is not the limit for Andriy. He plans a big-time restaurant with three-digit prices. There is no business at this level in Ukraine so far. He answers questions in a manner showing a determined character; he knows exactly what he is after and how to achieve it. Yet his career has not been as smooth and straight as it seems. Making big money is anything but easy. One must know how to risk himself and, strangely enough, show something of an artist. No, this is not a promotional interview and you will see that straight questions were posed and straight answers received, without any frills. And I think this is what makes a good story. Andriy is interesting to know as a representative of the modern bourgeoisie with its views and aspirations. Also, it is interesting to look at changes in our society at Zadorozhny’s business angle. I mean restaurants, places frequented by people with money. Customers are different from what they were yesterday and will be tomorrow...

TODAY PEOPLE KNOW THAT RESTAURANT GUNPLAY IS INDECENT

The Day: How did it all start?

A. Z.: I worked for the Intourist network back in 1987-88, lugging around foreign tourists’ suitcases and earning good money by Soviet standards. I could buy foreign currency.

The Day: Buying foreign currency was illegal, you could go to jail.

A. Z.: Yes, but that’s history. People like me supplied good clothes for half the Soviet Union. I was caught red-handed twice and every time they’d let me off for a bribe. The scoundrels took bribes, you know. Only those loath to part with money took the rap. I always said, okay, you found foreign currency on me, it’s yours.

Then a friend offered me a job in a cooperative. You’ll recall that cooperatives appeared mostly as Komsomol (Communist Youth League) youth businesses. Although the perestroika campaign was officially launched in 1985, real cooperatives appeared by 1991. Such Komsomol businesses under district committees were allowed to open cafes and video rental clubs. My friend was at the head of one such business, and he was second secretary of a district Komsomol committee. They ran a cafe in Podil. He said I could be a bartender, a job almost as prestigious as that of cosmonaut at the time... I worked for three and a half years, then my friend and I chipped in and opened a restaurant we named Gourmet on Povitroflotsky Prospect, the most popular hangout of the Kyiv underworld.

The Day: Yes, I remember and Kievskie vedomosti always wrote about militia roundups there.

A. Z.: Right. There were constant shootouts, even explosions, so after the Gourmet experience there is nothing to scare me.

The Day: Did you ever think that you’d go to work and never come back home?

A. Z.: Of course! People would enter the restaurant, leave their coats in the cloakroom, sit at a table, with organized crime division men looking in from outside. Ten minutes later a squad with machine guns would burst in and throw everybody on the floor, myself included. And this would be repeated five times during the night.

The Day: So how did you cope with the gunplay and explosions?

A. Z.: I think that if someone comes armed he should be dealt with by another armed person.

The Day: You mean gangsters versus gangsters?

A. Z. Of course. I’d say wait a second please, I’ll bring an interpreter that knows your language, for my job is different, serving cutlets.

The Day: What a clientele ... But it did change, didn’t it?

A. Z.: It did. The gangster’s profession lost popularity, and the mob started to become civilized. I can still see many familiar faces around...

The Day: No longer trigger-happy, are they?

A. Z.: They have others to do their wet work. They’re operating at a different level. At the time we opened our restaurant there was no culture in that line of business. Now people know that restaurant gunplay is indecent, it’s bad manners... I think we’ve contributed to this understanding. I often hear that my customers are street toughs and bribe-takers, that I’m paid dirty money. I say so what? We take their dirty money, put it in circulation, and use it to build new restaurants.

The Day: When did our lawmakers start visiting expensive restaurants? Right after the gangsters?

A. Z.: The gangsters appeared sometime in 1992 and the People’s Deputies in 1998. I’ve never categorized my customers. All I’m interested in is business.

The Day: What about foreigners? Is the number growing?

A. Z.: No, it’s dropping. Many have left; they don’t like our legislation.

The Day: Do you have particularly choosy customers?

A. Z.: Yes, we call them a pain in the neck, but they’re everywhere.

The Day: Are they in the VIP league?

A. Z.: Character is what really counts, not rank. But that’s part of my job. If people visiting an Italian restaurant order pickled cucumbers you just send someone to the market.

“I’M A PRODUCER WITH A MATHEMATICIAN ON PAYROLL”

The Day: What does style mean in the restaurant business?

A. Z.: I don’t like the sound of the phrase, restaurant business. If you treat it like just a business, you’ll fail.

The Day: So what do you do to be a success?

A. Z.: You have to treat it the way you do the theater, and in this sense I’m like a producer with a mathematician on payroll.

The Day: A mathematician to see that the producer doesn’t get carried away with the budget?

A. Z.: Right, so I don’t spend too much on stage props. The result must be a symbiosis of aesthetics and paying off. There are no little things about a restaurant, ranging from the cloakroom to the waiter’s shoes. As for style, it’s often grotesque. Take the Dejа Vu. It’s grotesque mixed with mock Americanism. In reality, however, it’s totally in Kyiv’s character

The Day: The Kyiv format. I think it’s mostly the clientele, the rest is American.

A. Z.: Clientele is the key setting of any restaurant show.

The Day: OK, let’s discuss clientele. Did you count on rich customers from the outset? The Ukrainian bourgeoisie?

A. Z.: If a man does not inherit money and earns it, he is a self-made man. That says a lot. I respect such individuals, and I’m fond of such bourgeois.

The Day: You are part of them, aren’t you?

A. Z. Probably so. And I respect those that managed to get the most out of these Times of Trouble.

The Day: You mean people like Berezovsky?

A. Z.: I’ve heard the name, but I don’t know much about him.

The Day: He privatized Aeroflot, television, and so on.

A. Z.: I would’ve also privatized something if I’d been able to, but I don’t know about that sort of thing.

The Day: I think you know everything.

A. Z.: I don’t have to. I have an excellent professional team, but like I said, I’m just a producer.

The Day: Granted, but a producer must know how the show starts, how the plot goes, and how it ends.

A. Z.: We don’t know when to ring down the curtain. We work until the last customer is served, pays, and leaves. And not just every day, but all our life. I’m responsible for our success. There is something mystical here, but there are also perfectly real aspects like a good data bank. I can have an idea about a new restaurant, so I listen to what others have to say about it, and other peoples’ opinions are quite different. We start working with the manager who puts together a team of designers, artists, and architects.

I saw rare motorcycle models in Europe and thought it would be a good idea to bring them to Ukraine. The motorcycles you see at the Dejа Vu date from 1936-42, bought in Germany and the Czech Republic. We have a restoration workshop. Fixing a motorcycle like that takes a lot of talent. We also have artists restoring icons.

The Day: How much is a motorcycle like that?

A. Z.: We bought them cheap, for they were in a bad condition, ten grand apiece.

The Day: You have a fancy for machines?

A. Z.: I have a great fancy for life, and machinery is a component. A restaurant is a small model of life. So much for the restaurant business.

The Day: Yes, the word combination you don’t like.

A. Z.: I don’t, but there’s no way to deny its existence.

The Day: All right, but where is your passions for restaurants rooted? Is it because you couldn’t afford a restaurant as a young man and then decided to build one and another one to make up for that disadvantage?

A. Z.: Are you being Freudian?

The Day: Well, maybe in a way.

A. Z.: You know, I don’t often go to restaurants, and I have a great many friends, so I have to find the time to answer 689 invitations in 365 days. No time left to go to someone else’s restaurant, for I’ve got my own restaurants to look after.

The Day: When abroad, stepping into a restaurant, don’t you get professional and think something like that fireplace would look good at one of my restaurants, and that interior as well?

A. Z.: Sure. I steal all the good ideas I come across. I have a cute little camera and I take pictures secretly of everything I like.

The Day: I’ve heard about industrial espionage. Does it mean that you are into restaurant espionage?

A. Z.: Well, someone has to “sow what is wise, what is good, what is true.”

The Day: What’s the most interesting catch of your camera-hunting? Maybe that sailfish hanging in one of your restaurants?

A. Z.: I caught it with my own hands when visiting Florida with a friend. I like real things inside my restaurant. Look at that boat hanging above us. It’s a real lifeboat. An old one. I had it restored, painted, and suspended from the ceiling. If we had a standard office ceiling instead it would cost us half as much. Simple designer’s solutions cost dear, but they’re worth the money.

The Day: You pick up interesting things in real life and add them to your restaurants.

A. Z.: Absolutely. I like naturalness and I hate mockups. I sense falseness at the subconscious level.

THREE CATEGORIES: DESTROYERS, WATCHERS, AND DOERS

The Day: Do you have many rivals?

A. Z.: No, not many, and they don’t know this business at sufficient depth. Martial art experts say that physical training, mastering the right grips, kicks, and throws is not as important as having the right state of mind.

The Day: Does this mean you keep your business in the right state of mind?

A. Z.: The spirit of a restaurant is the main thing that keeps it afloat for a long time. We are shaping up a Chinese restaurant and I do the sketching, I have a drawing board at home.

The Day: In other words, you’re getting the knack for Oriental philosophy?

A. Z.: No, I don’t have to go that far. All I need is to learn some of its elements. A restaurant is a stage setting in the first place. It’s a theater, not a temple.

The Day: There are theaters and there are theaters, I mean dramatic insight.

A. Z.: Correct. The same is true of restaurants. We have one called Da Vinci. It is quite expensive, with a full assortment of silverware, and topnotch service.

The Day: It also happens that one gets a complete set of musical instruments but can’t play any.

A. Z.: True. And then they politely take away the instruments you can’t play, leaving you with just a fork that you can use and enjoy your meal. People that can’t eat with chopsticks at a Japanese restaurant are supplied with sticks on elastic strings and told that maybe this will help them. Hitting a man sitting next to you with a dish in the head should be more embarrassing than being unable to use the right kind of eating utensils.

The Day: And if it happens?

A. Z.: We have specially trained security guards. They will smoothly take a trouble-making customer outside. Rude force must never be applied, for it spoils the interior, and I’m so fond of it!

The Day: It also happens that customers treat the interior rudely. We hear about acts of vandalism at museums and you have to deal with drunken customers that can just poke a fork or knife into a picture.

A. Z.: We have no masterpieces on display, but the funny thing is that they steal the pictures in the restroom, and every such picture is firmly attached to the wall. In fact, it takes a special tool to tear it off.

The Day: You mean they do it at such an expensive restaurant?

A. Z.: They sure do and one would think we need television cameras installed right in the toilets.

The Day: Will you?

A. Z.: No, that’s not our style. It’s easier to buy new pictures.

The Day: Let me understand. You stole someone else’s interior designs, driven by an aesthetic intent, and now someone is stealing pieces of your interior with criminal intent.

A. Z. That’s right. Also, they will take something off the wall and try it on, like a pressure suit. I can understand this; one feels high enough to take a flight to the moon. A child’s dream come true, you know.

The Day: What’s your dream?

A. Z.: A luxury restaurant, something we don’t have in Ukraine.

The Day: And something others have. Where?

A. Z.: New York, Paris. I’ve hired a French manager. He costs me and he says what am I supposed to do here. I tell you’ll teach me. He’s 45 and has opened six big hotels. I want to have a five-star restaurant, with admission by membership cards only. I want it to be a restaurant that will determine one’s social status, like changing a Renault for a Porsche. I like social climbers. I like people pursuing a certain goal. It’s much better than sitting over a beer and telling other people you’re not interested in money. I don’t like people that sit back and watch, instead of working. There are three human categories: destroyers, watchers, and doers. I like the doers.

The Day: But doers often destroy things. Remember the Internationale? “The earth shall rise on new foundation: we have been naught, we shall be all.”

A. Z.: Of course, one can step over dead bodies, but that’s not our way. We are peaceful and loving.