Restaurateur
Saveliy Libkin

When I try to remember how everything has began appears desire to come again into small café with a few tired prostitutes where a few portions of coffee and sandwiches with something not much resembling food have been sold during one day. Also sometimes gloomy characters in light and sometimes even in white socks have sat there. Many years have passed and today walking by the façade sometimes through the windows of veranda I recognize the silhouettes of an old juice bar in the famous shop.

Just now a man of decent appearance whose name is Roman Yakovlevich left the restaurant. His spouse also visits this restaurant sometimes and she sits at veranda for a long time, examining children near local cow. He usually orders Caesar salad and a few shot glasses of vodka but only if he comes alone. If he comes with his spouse then a good food and a bottle of Chilean wine appear on the table. His spouse comes to the restaurant with her friends more often and then they also drink vodka with salmon tartar or with Caesar salad again. He orders steaks only if he comes with Vladimir Naumovich. He is also regular guest of the restaurant who sometimes talks to the waitress as if he waits for their approval and understanding for very modest tip. But he leaves the tip only if he comes with Roman Yakovlevich. If he comes alone he doesn’t do it. But then the spouse of Roman Yakovlevich leaves a huge tip but only when she comes alone and she leave it only to the most attractive waiter Grisha. Other waiters don’t come up to her. Also sometimes they come to the restaurant all together and then the size of tip doesn’t depend on the waiter’s look.

And also young enough businessmen whose name is Evgeniy settled down in the restaurant. On his table you can always see 17-inches laptop and several cell phones, a modem- it is obligatory, and false purse Monblan. He has watch Breguet but it is also false, he likes to examine the next princess when she go to lavatory. He orders food seldom but he likes very much to treat the spouse of his friend who often is in business trips by Italian Merlot. And the size of tip is doubled when his friend’s spouse looks at him with kinder gaze because of the next bottle of Merlot.

At the table near the entrance settled down the grandson of local businessman PV. I write abbreviation because this PV is very notorious person. It is he who doesn’t economize on food and tip. And nobody care about that this tip has rather illegal origin. The grandson of PV sometimes hit on the spouse of Roman Yakovlevich but only if he is very drunk. And PV often invites to his table the second wife of Vladimir Naumovich and he doesn’t hide and confused much. And why he must do it because she comes to the restaurant not only with him. And attractive Grisha became saucy after he was invited «to drink a cup of coffee» by to girls whose fathers in Kiev rule the world. You see, he imagined that he is the main lady-killer in spite of that the tip from Roman Yakovlevich’s spouse he spends solely to the small shows of affection to the daughter of his boss in the restaurant, who dinned that Grisha must be the administrator into her father’s ears.  But this is only beginning of 2002 year….

To be continued on Saturdays after 10:00 p. m

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On Sunday I discovered three new food service enterprises at once.

One of them arised on the place of shop Potemkin, which has stayed in memory as First men’s shop with the most great opening and very fast closure.

The owner of the premises didn’t felt shy about the name and decided to open the restaurant by himself. Famous pretends to refinement, Japanese style, fine gastronomy and cafe with desserts at the same time. The main audience is local golden youth from 18 up to 25 years old. Beef tartare made by the former Chef of Londonskaya was rather interesting.

At Ekaterininskaya Street are renovations….Former Grand Cafe is under reconstruction, former  Paparazzi also…Even Fat Mozes is repainted. Faster then anyone Mario turned into Katja Hofmann.

The prices has been changed in two-three times, because they have drawn on the floor over the parquet famous designs of Leonardo da Vinci and the tables are varnished.

One more discovery this time was Itis, and at that in Riviera. The main product is frozen doughnuts «mochi» at a price from 14 uah per 1 piece.

After the defrost in 30 minutes you will get 50 grams of rice pastry with filling. The design of the department is excellent like everywhere in Itis.

Also many enterprise were opened at Tairova but I didn’t  reached there .

The last full stops in the New Year holidays has been putted at Dacha. And this time without consultations and help.

The team of the restaurant has develped the scenario by themsselves and they have organized an excellent show. It was a little naive, a little funny, a little sad but boundlessly sincere and merry in Dacha style. The guests have danced together with the team. The cooks have changed their clothes and  sung in their free time. The deputy manager was the  Father Frost and all administrators were  the Snow Maidens and other characters of the holiday. Borya was a hare. It was impeccably good in the atmosphere and on the table.  Аnd also I have recieved mail with compliments to the restaurant. But nevertheless the guests have reminded that the jellied minced meat has been finished exactly when they wanted to order it. By the way, this year the jellied mineced meat at Dacha was irreproachable.

The rest of photos from the Old New Year at Dacha.

One version is club. Here everything is rather foreseeable, at the best Nemiroff at a price of Beluga and Arcadia in the bottles of Hennessy Х0. But there are a lot of hormonal pleasures and almost free of charge. You will have to miss the speech of the president like any other New Year TV programs. If to add to this some intoxication by music and pills then you will have something to remember on the 3 of January because on the first and the second of January you will have to stay in bad.

One more version is gatherings in front the city hall. The differences from the club are obvious. The public champagne straight from the bottle, olivier salad from the plastic cup and risk to communicate in the police department early in the morning if you will wash down all this things with vodka and to gambol a little.

You can buy a ticket for some program like a few songs of Frank Sinatra performed by the local Bilan or more expensive star in the post-retirement age. All the rest somehow or other will be like in the version of club. In the New Year night the control is absent nowever like in every other nights, so the staff win back at full scale: it’s like if we will carry the trays then we must ear at least 20% of receipts of the enterprise. Besided the slightly drunk and merry guests hardly will be able to distinguish Grey Goose from Khortitsa, so it will be better do not conduct the inventory during the first week of new year, in any case you won’t find the answers. If you will book the restaurant in advance then if you are known person in this restaurant and you stand high in staff”s esteem you have a chance to pay a little more money and to get decent food and spirits but also without president on TV. Here everything depends on what the guests prefer. Most likely you should not expect on the delicacies from the Atlantic and Mediterranean Sea this year, but the decent jellied minced meat and the service are guaranteed for you. Of course in the different restaurants of the city everything will be absolutely in different way. Because everything begins from the head not only with fish.

Our «Compot» and «Steakhouse» at Deribasovskaya Street will work in ordinary conditions and they will be opened all night long. In the «Steak» the manager has odered 150 bottles of an excellent champagne and Regan* is in the firm mood. In the «Compot» we renew the menu and especially for the New Year we willl make a few more glamourous dishes . So all the restaurant pleasures will be provided and we will not have the frozen lobsters and Kobzon’s doubles like on any other days.

*The chef of the restaurant.

The last lesson of child culinary school in this year will take place tomorrow at «Dacha».
Also it will be the last lesson of our culinary school «Meat&Wine» in this semester and in this year.If everything was quite understandabe with the school for adults (we had the experience of the last year) then with child school it was not quite understandable at the begining. We have planned a few trial lessons within the summer holidays. The first experience was a success and we have addeded new lessons to the program of child school.

The subjects for a new semester for adult and child schools are disscussing now.
So if you have any ideas about it — please write to me, I will be greatful.

Many people in Odessa and in Ukraine in the whole are occupied with business. And if in the short-term prospect money is the only one criterion then a huge quantity of cafe-bars have moved on from the seventies to our present time (only the signs and the names of the positions has been changed). On the other hand for the absolutely unpretentious guests and for those who just want to find a chair and food mass in his plate the paradise comes. The food mass gets different names, it has very affordable price. Besides it is warm that is not the least of the factors and the light is burning. Huge quantity of the «restaurants» reminds me the fruit tree with plastic leaves on which the nylon apples are grow and a huge quantity of Ukrainians try to tear them down, to pay money for it and to сrack it.
If to talk about hospitality and about quality of restaurant business then I can say that only small quantity of people in our country do exactly this business. That is why we have some quantity of restaurants where can enter hardly live middle class who are not indifferent to what they eat and what kind of service they get. As a rule the same restaurants are visited by the pretentious tourists. Only hard-to-please guest can identify where the true hospitality is shown really.
If to talk about thу prospects then in 2010 year it will be ten times more businesses. Each of two hundreds cooks who have graduated local specialized schools in 2009 year can make «sushi in Ukrainian style». But not each ten of them can cook ordinary mashed potatoes but because it is more interesting to serve the rice with other frozen products we have more experts in this sphere.
In the short-term prospect fine dinning will be re-qualified partially in pizzerias, partially it will be satisfied with minimal profit and like previously it will substitute food for the branded tableclothes excluding rare situations when the chef is the owner of the restaurant or when the owner is not indifferent. In the capital fine dinning will be still substituted for the glamourous interior and foreign terminology in menu. The gastronomic restaurants which exist in Ukraine only on the paper will not appear in the reality as before. Innitialy created on the perfect cooking of dishes from the most fresh products brought from the small private farms but not on the gilding, branded tableclothes and chandeliers, such projects suppose absolutely another cultural-economic situation. Fast foods which sell dried out a little chops with salad and another plastic food will be still sucessful and called-for. Much more succesful will be the restaurants in the segment «buy Ukrainin products» in beatiful cover. Family restaurants without pretensions, with average prices and good reputation in food will be visited like before.

Specially for «Аfisha of Odessa»