Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

Within full 17 years of the ownership and managing of the restaurants  I have passed several periods of my attitude to the people who write. Everything has began from the lack of understanding, something like, how they can write about things if they do not have any idea about it… because often the writers even do not eat in the restaurants. They may to drink a cup of tea or coffee and to turn over the pages of menu, but they won’t spend money for the rest,… and why… everything is quite clear for the person who write. Because he writes and it means that he knows about what he writes. That is why people have special confidence in the scribble. People of the elder age still use the turn of speech «I have read about…» If I have read then I believe. If I believe, then everyone also must believe. I wish we could have such a naivety in the political technology. Then any plumber could have a chance to become a deputy or president. However he has a chance even now. But he must to spend a huge amount of money so that the message can reach every trusting person. Therefore money is the barrier between a plumber with ambitions and elected representative of the people. O.K. with politics… there are only bare promises there. Sometimes it can happen in the restaurants also, but people vote there by money but not by papers and the confidence in the written things is tattered gradually, from coffee to coffee, from soup to soup. But I had this attitude to the persons who write rather long ago…

Then I have met some interesting and carried away people. As a matter of fact these people also get money for their work but they will never write that black is white. They do their best to take care of their honour. And by the way, I would like to say many thanks to them for this. There are not so much such a half honest-half principled persons and not in the capital. What edition will stand that the potential advertisers and dealers will know the truth about themselves? They are not enemies for themselves. On the other hand such writers won’t praise in the magazines. Something like we will keep silent… and in this way we will please our own half principle. I do not speak about direct advertising as everything is simpler here. Almost every edition will place on the cover the photo of meat dumplings from the dive with large print «Very delicious in the Dive», if only the financing allows.

Today restaurant criticism is absent also. To be more precise the columns in the different editions are present and people read them. Sometimes people even trust the opinion of the journalists who write those columns. But the criticism is very delicate matter. And the border between the splashing out of your own irritation caused by the conflict in your family or on your job and the reflection of the restaurant and in that way so you will be able to see the restaurant as alive behind the literary sugariness and euphonious stock phrases and more complex tokens, so that you can see it with all its special features and embellishments, with all its system and situational failures, with all its real victories and small godsends. It happens but unfortunately not often.

I would like to read the sharp and highly professional criticism. Such criticism which will make you to think over and to turn back, which will help you to notice one more time that things which are suppressed and hidden unconscientiously, which will help a guest to orient between glamorous interiors with dumplings and sushi from the supermarket, which you will read several times and every time to learn something new.

Мy recommendations to the first-time critics

First of all you, before you will sit down to write you should to talk with the staff about very different things. By all means you should pay your own money for the lunch or dinner. In this way you will feel better the reality. If you have noticed a small failure then it will be important to check is these failures are the system. It would be nice to reach the kitchen and also to visit those corners of the restaurant where the guests can’t get. Then you should to talk with chef and manager and in the very end with the owner. Invite your friends in the restaurant and listen what the will say. And also don’t be shy and appraise the service, the cuisine, the interior, the atmosphere, the quality-price ratio, the wine etc. according to the five-grade scale. Never show honest criticism to the owner before the publication. And also the most important thing: don’t be afraid to write the truth because the restaurateurs and the gusts want to know it.

Concerning that fact that the restaurant business of Ukraine is only 16-17 years old we can’t expect very much that  the food writers, restaurant critics and columnists of the level of those who works for The New York Times, The Guardian, Robb Report, BBC or International Herald Tribune. And also like for The Prague Post  with weekly budget $400 only for the payment of the restaurant checks.

If in Russia Dmitriy Alekseev, Aleksey Zimin, Zhenyz Kuyda and Svetlana Kesoyan write for a long time and seasoned then in Ukraine I recommend to read works of Alla Zakonova, Valeriy Polyakov and also maximum several journalists from Afisha Kiev, Kommersant, Harper’s Bazzar, Time Out and Delovaya Stolitsa who write and know about food and restaurant simultaneously.