A training program for those who dream of creating a restaurant from scratch or improving their skills in the field of restaurant management.
"Management in restaurant business and club industry" RMA - training program management personnel and mastering such professions as manager or director of a restaurant/club, purchasing manager, service manager, HR manager, hall manager, bar manager, outdoor restaurant director, banquet service director, F&B director. The program opens up bright prospects and many career opportunities for restaurant or club owners, as well as anyone who already works in the restaurant industry or wants to get a profession in the restaurant or club business. Classes are taught by leading restaurateurs in Russia and the world, practice in the best restaurants and clubs in Moscow. Foreign internships in Europe and the USA. Among the program partners are the Arkady Novikov Group of Companies, ROSINTER, ARPIKOM, ILOVECAFE, the Federation of Restaurateurs and Hoteliers, the Bartenders Association of Russia, the Russian Guild of Chefs and many others. Form of study: evening (3 times a week), 1 year
Evgenia Kachalova's performances are always filled with incredible energy and high-quality content, and the master class at RMA was no exception.
Evgenia Kachalova said that now concepts with sexual overtones sell best, what makes up the charm of a project, how people react to certain conceptual triggers, is it true that the restaurant business teaches you to be calm about the constant stream of problems, how they look for premises and how clean The Wine Bazaar bars are striving to make a profit.
Students also learned about the most right decisions in Evgenia’s life and the upcoming changes for the Wine Bazaar chain of bars.
We thank Evgenia for so willingly sharing her accumulated experience and knowledge and congratulate you on the opening of the new project “Igristy” on Pyatnitskaya!
#rma #rmarest #wine market #zhenyakachalova #kachalova
Real spring has come to Moscow and the only thing I want to do is spend time outside.
However, we hope that you find the motivation to attend the classes because we have prepared many interesting lectures for you in the coming month.
In May, the following will speak for business school students: Gleb Marach “Project Management”, Evgenia Lerman “Workshop on ServiceGuru”, Anna Fradkin Anna Fradkin “ Legal aspects opening of the restaurant", Irina Makerova " Practical activities restaurant manager”, Ekaterina Salakhieva “Practical aspects of the work of a restaurant manager”, Konstantin Krivoshonok Konstantin Krivoshonok “Sanitary and hygienic indicators of enterprises’ activities catering"and much more (see the schedule on the website for details).
See you in class!
#rmarest #rma #restaurant #startup #cafe #management
How to ensure that the service in your restaurant is truly customer-oriented, how to increase the flow of guests and the filling of the check through a deep understanding and effective satisfaction of the guest’s needs?
Also, why do European countries refuse dishes with avocado in their restaurants and how to hold 12 banquets at the same time?
Olga Semanova, Deputy General Director of the Ginza Project holding, spoke about all this at her lecture for students of the restaurant faculty.
#rma #rmarest #restaurant #startup #cafe #guests
Today the course on financial management ended with a lecture by Aleksei Medvedev, in which he summarized the material received and answered students’ questions:
-What can be the maximum wage fund and how can you save on it?
-How to reduce costs without harming your business?
-How liquid is the restaurant business? Will it be possible to get a loan for it?
-How to distribute revenue so that there are no “cash gaps”?
And many other important issues related to the life of the restaurant.
Students have an exam ahead of them, we wish everyone success in writing it!
#rmarest #rma #finance #businessschool #rma #restaurant #finance #startup
"Tomorrow's Chief"
From June 17 to 19, the third international training forum for chefs, “Chef’s Breakfast,” will be held in Moscow.
Every year, it brings together all the leaders who shape the trends in the country's gastronomic development: experts, entrepreneurs and chefs - all those who keep up with the times, create current projects and shape modern Russian cuisine.
#RMA Partners #rmarest #rma #chef's breakfast
From June 17 to 19, the third international training forum for chefs “Zavtra’k Chef” will be held in Moscow. Traditionally, it is visited by more than 2000 people from Russia...
The restaurant of Boris Zarkov and Ilya Tyutenkov “Gorynych” became...
The VI festival of restaurant concepts Palmfest 2019 and the Palm Branch of the Restaurant Business award ceremony took place in Moscow.
The restaurant “Gorynych” by Boris Zarkov and Ilya Tyutenkov won the “Palm Branch” award. Birch restaurant took second place, Moya Fish took third place.
A total of nine concepts were selected for the finals: Avocado Queen Restaurant (Moscow), “Gorynych” (Moscow), “My Fish” (Moscow), J"PAN (Moscow), “#Vermuteria” (Moscow), #Barcelonetaresta (Sochi) , #Birch (St. Petersburg), bobo restobar (St. Petersburg), “#Closet” (Yoshkar-Ola), reminiscent of Food Service Magazine.
#palm branch #award #rmarest #rma Ramil Vafin
The VI festival of restaurant concepts Palmfest 2019 and the Palm Branch award ceremony took place in Moscow. A total of nine were selected for the final...
The Fourth Russian Restaurant Festival (RRF) will be held from April 20 to May 10 in 450 restaurants in 30 cities, including Moscow, St. Petersburg, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, Yalta, Voronezh, Tula and others.
In restaurants that participate in the festival, you will be able to try a special set of 3-5 popular or new dishes at fixed price 990 rubles. It is noted that some establishments will focus on local products or traditional recipes from their regions.
“Last year, guests bought more than 75 thousand sets - almost 75 million rubles went to small businesses. Therefore, interest in the project is growing from restaurants, from residents, and from city administrations. That is why in 2019 there is already such an impressive number of participants - this great bonus both for citizens, and a clear advantage for increasing the tourist attractiveness of the city,” said Alexander Sysoev, founder of the Russian Restaurant Festival.
This year the Federal Tourism Agency became a partner of the festival. On RRF dates, travelers will have special prices at Hyatt hotels (using promo code fest), at Azimut Hotels (promo code rrf2019), as well as when booking other hotels on the website Ostrovok.ru (promo code foodfest19).
If you start Saturday with an away class at RMA, the day will definitely be productive 💪🏻
Today we visited ObedBufet / ObedBufet.
Andrey Serdin showed the internal structure of the kitchen and answered students’ questions:
-why refrigerators should be filled to a maximum of 60%
-For what induction cooker monthly preventive maintenance is needed
-Is it true that foil is one of the main “enemies of the kitchen”
-why it is almost impossible to change the location of a wood-burning pizza oven and much more.
We also discussed the rules of working with suppliers: how to choose an anchor supplier, the pros and cons of a single supplier, and what terms of cooperation are important to include in the contract.
Have a nice weekend everyone!
#rmarest #rma #obedbufetmsk #lunchbufet #restaurant
Moscow Coffee Festival 2019
Moscow Coffee Festival 2019
The Moscow Coffee Festival will be held at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory site in the Nadezhda hall from April 19 to 21. This city festival annually brings together coffee lovers, industry professionals who know the secrets of its preparation, and modern Russian coffee shops under one roof.
The Faculty of Management in the Restaurant Business and Club Industry acts as an information partner of the event.
#rma #rmarest #school #startup #restaurant #RMA partners
The Moscow Coffee Festival will be held at the Trekhgornaya Manufactory site in the Nadezhda hall from April 19 to 21. This city festival annually brings together...
Value in papers: Lana Badu on the restaurant concept book
At the FoodService Moscow exhibition, the owner of the OMG!Agency, a teacher at the Faculty of Management in the Restaurant Business and Club Industry, Lana Badou, told why most mistakes when opening a restaurant are made at the initial stage, and how they can be avoided.
The main points of her speech are published by HoReCa-magazine.
#rma #rmarest #OMGAgency #badu
At the FoodService exhibition, the owner of the agency OMG! Agency, teacher of the Faculty of Management in the Restaurant Business and Club Industry Lana Badu...
Today there was an optional excursion for RMA students to the DEPO food mall.
Let's tell you a few interesting facts, which we learned about from the excursion:
It turns out that everyone at the Depot has common dishes, which psychologically justifies the fairly high average bill at the food mall and eliminates confusion with dishes at different corners.
Did you know that when the Hello People project removed the glass walls, the flow of their guests increased by 30%?
According to experts, Confectionery Pearl has one of the best Marzocco Strada coffee machines, a huge honey cake is sold out in an hour, and the display also displays 3D desserts from one of the strongest Ukrainian confectioners, Dinara Kasko.
In total, the Depot has 11,000 sq.m., about 2,000 plantings, 64 ongoing projects and 140 farm stalls, products from which can be delivered to you by Yandex Food.
We thank Victoria Reshulskaya, PR director of the communication agency "Appetizing Marketing", (Vika Reshulskaya) for conducting an educational tour of the concepts of the largest food mall in Europe!
#rmarest #rma #depot #foodmall #appetizingmarketing #restaurant #startup #Yandexeda Appetite Marketing
We invite you to PalmaFest and the final of the Palm Branch award
On April 22, 2019, the 6th festival of restaurant concepts #PalmaFest will take place at the Mir TKZ, as well as the final of the Palm Branch of the Restaurant Business award, where the best Russian restaurant concept of the year will be selected.
The promotional code “RMA” will give you a 10% discount when purchasing a ticket using the link: https://palmafest.ru/vesna_2019
The Faculty of Management in the Restaurant Business and Club Industry acts as an information partner of the event.
#rmarest #rma #school #palm branch #RMA partners
On April 22, 2019, the 6th PalmaFest festival of restaurant concepts will take place at the Mir TKZ, as well as the final of the Palm Branch of the Restaurant Business...
Clear and high-quality management of all departments is necessary. This can only be achieved through quality management.
What is management?
There are many definitions of this term. However, the simplest and most accurate is the literal translation of the word manage, which means “to manage.” However, you can control objects, equipment, and human resources.
The word “management” itself is quite general; there are many interpretations of it. In the 21st century, the management function becomes the connecting function in the work of any enterprise and organization. And the management of the hotel and restaurant business is no exception.
Why is it important to build good management?
Restaurant management is one of the popular and developing ones. People will always need to satisfy one of the basic instincts: to eat nourishingly and tasty. At the same time, they want to do this in a cozy place where they can chat and relax. That is why most cafes and restaurants have a constant flow of customers, good revenue and a long-term prospect of their existence.
It should be noted that any business is built successfully only when, in addition to a good idea and plan, there are highly qualified personnel (in extreme cases, personnel capable of training), as well as financial resources and well-structured management. The last aspect is increasingly becoming decisive, because it concerns all other criteria and, in fact, determines them.
For example, the (director) deals with financial issues in a company or organization. The recruitment, promotion and dismissal of workers is controlled by the HR manager, etc. Accordingly, only by building competent management can a hotel or restaurant grow and develop, displacing competitors from the service market.
What are the problems?
Hotel and restaurant business management is a complex and multifaceted process. The main problem in building a management structure can be called poor communications and relationships between the owner, general director and managers at different levels. Most often, those who open their own hotel or restaurant want to keep everything under control, in their own hands.
He begins to implement it himself, monitors their work, and does not forget to keep an eye on the solution financial issues etc. As a result, such a manager simply does not have time to perform all the functions, is torn into pieces, and asks his assistants and administrators for help in resolving various issues.
Thus, firstly, it doubles the workload on the working staff. Secondly, he trusts even small decisions organizational issues people who don't have management education. Feeling a little “in authority,” they begin to point and scold the staff. As a result, it worsens, and it is this that serves as the basis for the quality work of all employees. Therefore, it is much easier for a manager to hire a middle manager who could solve various organizational issues and organize work with personnel.
Very often in any establishment you can hear the phrase: “I’ll call the manager now.” And, indeed, he comes running, polite and good, ready to resolve any of your questions and solve problems. How difficult it really is for him, because you can’t please every guest. And you come across the strangest people: picky, nervous, not in the mood, etc.
What will a manager in a hotel or restaurant be responsible for? Both spheres of activity are equated, since in both cases they mean a sphere aimed at providing services to a person. A competent manager in such cases must be responsible for the staff (for example, waiters, if it is a cafe; cleaners, maids, if it is a hotel), proper organization their work, the socio-psychological climate in the team, interaction with clients and senior management, constant monitoring of the situation, staff motivation, planning, etc. This is a huge functionality, after familiarizing yourself with which you may simply not want to be a manager. However, it is not for nothing that he is considered a manager and receives an appropriate salary.
Restaurant management: its specifics
Of course, hotel and restaurant management has its own specifics. Let's look at the key points. Firstly, it is control over the costs and expenses of the company providing services. This applies to various expense items, including staff bonuses, depreciation expenses, etc. Secondly, it provides quality marketing, which is the key to success. Advertising, promotion of services, attracting clients - without these important aspects restaurant management is losing its meaning.
High-quality service must be provided by both employees and managers who exercise control. This applies to They must be polite and careful. At the same time, the dishes must correspond to the picture on the menu and have a good price-quality ratio.
The manager himself should be an example for his wards. He is obliged to monitor discipline, create a good climate in the team, motivate staff, think through and introduce a system of competent bonuses and rewards for employees. Thus, restaurant management is the basis successful activities hotel or restaurant.
25.02.2017 18.04.2018
Advanced training program “Club Project Management”.
An educational program focusing on management in the private club industry.
The program is intended for company owners general directors and heads of marketing and business development departments, as well as investors interested in the creation or development of any club-type structures: from the club regular clients and professional associations to private active recreation clubs.
It is possible to conduct a corporate program.
Purpose of the program:
To create in students a comprehensive vision of various approaches to organizing the club community as an effectively functioning, legally formalized structure.
As a result, students will learn:
— Choose the type of club that best suits specific project;
— Understand the peculiarities of the functioning of the club’s departments and personnel;
— Use tools to create a club system;
— Create a functional structure of the club, taking into account its characteristics;
— Select the required minimum of documents and storage media
to create a system of intra-club communications.
If you are:
— A top manager of an existing “infrastructure” club who wants to streamline his knowledge acquired in practical work;
— An investor planning to create a new club project (start-up);
— The owner of a “virtual” club project, striving to find new ways to develop his club community;
- and even - a successful student planning a career in the tourism industry...
— THIS PROGRAM IS FOR YOU.
Full-time education.
Classes 2 days a week: Saturday – Sunday, from 11:00 to 18:00.
Tuition fee: 20,000 rub.
Module 1. Creation and development of a private club
Introduction. The history of the emergence of club communities. Types and examples of clubs. Getting to know/understand listener motivation.
Club system: development and implementation. Open and closed clubs.
Basic international terminology. Types of contributions and categories of membership.
Legal aspects of creating a club.
Peculiarities organizational structure club: non-profit organization and business structure. Functions of administration, board and club committees. Structure of income and expenses various types clubs.
In this article we will talk about the effective use of workers in restaurants, cafes and other catering establishments.
All responsibility for organizing the management of the restaurant business lies with the administration of the enterprise. It is the restaurant management that purchases equipment, supervises and trains employees, tries to introduce new, effective working methods, which leads to a natural improvement in the performance of the restaurant or cafe.
Restaurant business management: Rational organization of labor
How to achieve efficient use of restaurant workers? Development of rational and effective methods labor for all areas of activity is the task of the administration.
First of all, any catering establishment must have a document that details the responsibilities and rights of each employee.
The purpose of this document is to ensure any operation with minimum cost time and effort.
For example, at any production site there should be lists of dishes with all the components that need to be provided throughout the day. Cold shop workers can immediately check the availability of certain products they need today and quickly receive them from the warehouse.
Equipment at a catering establishment must not only be rationally placed, but also ensure a position in which the necessary mechanism is immediately at hand.
For example, a food cutting machine installed in the main production area causes inconvenience to the cook, who is currently busy in the pre-cooking room - and from time to time he needs to move from one room to another.
The lack of small kitchen utensils at hand is often one of the reasons for decreased labor productivity in catering establishments.
Therefore, it is important to provide for the presence of required quantity all tools: kitchen knives, keys for opening bottles and canned food, bowls, turks, plates for different types dishes. In search of all these and other tools, cooks and waiters are forced to spend a significant amount of working time.
Use of semi-finished products and ready-to-eat dishes
It is the use of semi-finished products and ready-to-eat dishes that contributes to increased productivity and efficient use of service personnel. After all production functions when cooking they are reduced.
Let us remember that the main task of public catering establishments - restaurants, cafes, dumpling shops, etc. - is not to produce products, but to sell them. Therefore, every minute saved on food preparation helps to serve faster more customers and, accordingly, increase the volume of trade turnover.
Menu limitation
An excessively large list of dishes, drinks, and snacks forces service personnel to spend more effort and time on preparing them and serving customers. After all, to prepare dishes that are in limited demand, you need to spend the same amount of time as preparing popular items.
Therefore, the restaurateur must review his menu from time to time, getting rid of ineffective items. This habit leads not only to food savings, but also to reduced labor costs.
Placement of workers
The placement of workers in a restaurant and its planning is the daily concern of the administration. Many restaurateurs prefer to create weekly work plans for employees. In some cases, it is much more effective to create hourly work schedules.
The greatest problems in personnel placement are observed during festive events and during rush hours (lunch, evening). Such moments should be foreseen in advance and planned in the employee placement schedule. So that it doesn’t happen that in the morning 5 waiters don’t know what to do with themselves, and in the afternoon they can’t cope with their duties due to the influx of visitors.
So, the restaurateur must clearly know how the flow of visitors to the establishment is distributed not only by day of the week, but also by hour. Unfortunately, few managers take this into account. important point. Therefore, the efficiency of the staff and, consequently, the profit of the restaurant decreases.
Let's summarize.
Restaurant business management involves, first of all, increasing labor productivity in a catering establishment. To provide rational organization labor in a restaurant or cafe, the manager must pay attention to the following points:
- It is necessary to plan the placement of employees.
- It is necessary to regularly compare the number of man-hours spent and the volume hourly, and not just the daily revenue of the enterprise.
- The workload of catering workers requires regulation and equalization.
- In those areas that are not related to customer service or dispensing food, we must strive to reduce the amount of work in various ways.
- The menu requires regular review and reasonable reduction of items.
- In order to improve operational efficiency, establishment opening hours should be limited.
- Responsibilities must be consistent with employee qualifications. Highly trained and highly paid personnel should not be allowed to waste time performing duties that could be done by an inexperienced newcomer.
An accurate definition of the responsibilities and rights of each employee is strictly necessary in any successful catering establishment.
“At the heart of the restaurant business, like any other business, is accounting and control. When opening and promoting a restaurant, you must, first of all, think about the economy, calculate your every step, otherwise you will not see success. Under no circumstances should you act on the basis of intuition alone, at random, based on the message: “What if he tramples?” There is nothing more stupid than opening a restaurant in the hope that “friends will come to me.” I've seen quite a few of these restaurants and they all ended badly. Remember: friends can help you drink away your demi-season coat. It is naive to expect that they will make you money. I'll tell you more: as soon as you invite your friends to pay for lunch at your restaurant, they will most likely be offended and leave. And you will have neither friends nor a restaurant.
I would recommend that every restaurateur complete accounting courses (in order to do good math) and take the necessary steps towards legal self-education (in order to know the laws under which you have to work and understand what kind of troubles you should expect from regulatory authorities. By the way, about the authorities: if in times Soviet Union public catering enterprises were inspected by five institutions (fire service, SES, people's control, local control and audit department and OBHSS), but now there are forty such institutions. And everyone’s task is to catch you in all sorts of violations and benefit financially from it).”
Lack of living space
“This is one of the main problems of the domestic restaurant business. In the West, the vast majority of premises used for restaurants and cafes belong to the owners of the establishments. In our country, on the contrary, up to 90 percent of such areas are leased. This circumstance, given rental rates, can kill even a successful project.
Let me give you a specific example: one of the restaurants of the Goodman chain, Mikhail Zelman, worked for five years in one of the Ramstores. And he paid rent at $700 per square meter. Then, when the lease expired, the owners of the premises offered to renew it, but at a price of $2,100 per square meter, that is, three times more expensive. “Arpicom” did the math and decided that it was better to close the restaurant, since at such prices it would work solely to pay off the rent. This, by the way, relates to the issue of accounting.”
Personnel specifics
“There are practically no personnel. Nobody prepares them - neither waiters, nor cooks, nor head waiters. There are no advanced training courses either. The secrets of professions are learned for the most part in practice, passed on directly at the workplace, from hand to hand, from word of mouth. Moreover, experienced staff often teach newcomers not how to do something correctly (cook, serve, etc.), but how best to deceive and steal. This is our tradition. And I myself, when I started as an apprentice cook at the Budapest restaurant, encountered this. Back then it was called “taking trophies”: if you don’t take it, they look at you with suspicion, as if you’re not their own, and, naturally, they suspect you of being a “snitch.” There was a saying: “Take care of your honor from a young age, and take care of your trophies in the morning.” There was a whole philosophy that justified the general theft: our production manager liked to talk about the fact that it didn’t start with us, they say, it didn’t start with us, and it won’t end with us.
Many years have passed since then, but the problem has not gone away. I remember in the mid-80s, the first cooperative restaurants did not hire people from the old Soviet public catering at all, fearing precisely their ineradicable habit of theft and other abuses. But this didn’t help either: now, from the height of my years and accumulated experience, I can say that in any restaurant there will always be 10 percent of people who will always steal, no matter what the threat may be to them, and another 10 who, by virtue of their moral qualities will never stoop to this level. The remaining 80 percent are not exactly hardened thieves, but it’s difficult to call them 100% honest people: if there is an opportunity to steal, they will steal, if not, then oh well. This is about control."
How to find the kitchen key
“Where to get a chef is again a question of economics. Bearing in mind that nowhere in our country are cooks trained at the proper level, decide who you need: an unknown Russian or a person with a name, a Western star? Here again, options are possible, depending on what kind of restaurant you are building: for example, if it is a steakhouse, then you can do without a chef at all. I will say more: to work in a steakhouse you can hire inexpensive, but quite high-quality Uzbeks and Azerbaijanis who have the correct idea of what fried meat should be like. True, these ideas of theirs are based mainly on barbecue, steak is a different story, but after a little retraining of these specialists, it may well be enough for you.
It’s a completely different matter if you set your sights on creating a gourmet restaurant: you most likely won’t be able to do it without a foreigner. And here you need to count very carefully, since normal foreigners, those who receive 3 thousand euros at home, will not come to us for less than ten. What do you want when they form an idea of Russia exclusively from television, and television endlessly shows them that here it is dark, cold, gloomy, endless wars and rampant crime. Well, who will come here after this? Only adventurers, and even those for a lot of money.
A separate question: should you promote your chef and make him a star? On the one hand, if you do make it, it can greatly increase the attendance of the establishment and the amount of the average check. On the other hand, you need to be prepared for the fact that the chef, feeling like a star, will start talking about raising his salary. And it will be difficult to prove to him that his current status is primarily your merit.
The same applies to sending cooks to additional training and advanced training courses. As a rule, upon returning from there, they immediately begin to demand an increase in salary, citing the fact that “now we can do more and cost more” and blackmail the owner with possible departure. My advice: to avoid this, when sending cooks (and any other staff) for training at your own expense, be sure to enter into an agreement with them, according to which they undertake to work in your restaurant for 2-3 years upon their return.
And one more thing: in order to control the cooks, to be able to ask them, the restaurateur must understand what this work involves. Therefore, my advice: one day, put on a chef’s jacket and apron and get into production. Go to cold shop, hot, in a pastry shop, do something with your own hands. Believe me, it's useful. This way you will quickly begin to understand how the job works, how the cooks make money for you, and what you pay them for.”
Lost prestige of the profession
“Waiters in the current Russian restaurant business are perhaps the most problematic personnel position. The fact is that it is almost impossible to find a person who would connect his future with this profession, who would intend to work as a waiter all his life. Now for the vast majority of people this is nothing more than an opportunity to somehow get by, correct the shaky financial situation, until the opportunity for another, more respectable and highly paid job came up.
In Soviet times, everything was different. At that time, the profession of a waiter was considered prestigious. She was taught - there was a School of Waiters and Head waiters, and very often people who already had higher education. Why? Do the math for yourself: a graduate of a Soviet university, having got a job in his specialty, could count on a salary of 110-130 rubles. And the waiter with all the tips earned 300-350 rubles a month, or even more. This was already the level of university professors, so it is not surprising that people did not want to lose such work and held on to it.
However, let's go back to today. Since waiters are not currently trained anywhere, their training is again the responsibility of the restaurateur. Buy a book about what a waiter should be able to do, and work in this direction, referring to it. In principle, the list of these skills is not too extensive: clearly accept orders; constantly keep the guest in sight in order to respond to all his wishes in a timely manner and, if possible, warn them; be at the same time inconspicuous, unobtrusive and friendly. Everything seems clear and not complicated. But problems still arise, and quite often. And especially the big ones - with goodwill, sincere goodwill (I call this “conscious hospitality”) - so that without familiarity, but also without fawning. Why is the Italian style of service so valued all over the world? This is precisely why their waiters are fast, accurate, smiling, willing to make contact with the client, but at the same time they always behave with self-esteem. In our country, people tend to go to extremes: either rudeness, or, on the contrary, humiliating ingratiation to the guest.
How to deal with this? In my opinion, there is only one way: to personally supervise the staff and point out to them their mistakes and shortcomings. That's what I always do. My office is the Nostalgia room, I am there most of day, and my head is constantly spinning 360 degrees.”
Russian cuisine: revival of a legend
“We still lack such an attitude towards own kitchen, which, for example, exists in France. There, cooking is officially recognized as a component of the national culture, and the state allocates money to support it, including grants for training promising chefs. However, this is not surprising: France has been on the world culinary Olympus for more than 200 years; its cuisine has been known outside the country since the Great Bourgeois Revolution of the late 18th century, when many French emigrants who left their homeland opened their restaurants in many European countries.
In Russia, the history of the restaurant business is much shorter: in our country it developed rapidly from 1885 to 1918, after which there came an almost 70-year break, also associated with the revolution, which, however, influenced Russian cuisine by no means as beneficially as into French.
I will even say that over the years we have almost completely lost Russian pre-revolutionary cuisine: what is now called by this term is rather Soviet cuisine. This happened because Russian cuisine, like any other, is absolutely heterogeneous and consists of many regional cuisines (for example, there is no single Italian cuisine, but there is the cuisine of Piedmont, Sicily, Florentine cuisine, and so on). And regional cuisines are based on regional, that is, exclusive products not produced anywhere else. Before the revolution, there were a great variety of them in Russia: Nezhin cucumbers, Belozersk smelt, Khakass lamb, Tatar dried goose, Yaroslavl “red hat” (dried aspen boletuses, of which 16 thousand poods were harvested per year) were widely known in the country and abroad... this list goes on and on. Now practically nothing remains of all this wealth, and 95 percent of the products supplied to Russian restaurants are of foreign origin. What kind of “Russian” cuisine can there be?
Now we need to restore own production, revive ancient recipes and cooking methods. I think it's quite promising direction, capable of bringing Russian cooking and the Russian restaurant business to a new qualitative level.”
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