10:00
That’s early in the morning for a Sunday. But the Italian chef, who is also the owner of an author’s restaurant in Kirov, has been on his feet for a long time. He greets me and my photographer with an amazing cappuccino. But he is in no hurry to chat; he says he’s in the middle of preparing noodles. Renato Mastai makes his own dough and it’s a pleasure to watch him! The skilful way he handles the dough can only be compared to the work of an artist. “It’s a song! It’s poetry in motion!” – the photo correspondent exclaimed, impressed.
Then Jana, Renato’s wife, who actually runs the restaurant, comes in.
And when the first batch of the traditional Italian dish has gone into the oven, in this refined, even luxurious, dining hall, to the sound of Italian melodies, the couple tell us their story…
Fateful Meeting
Renato and Jana met in Moscow. In 1993, the Italian moved to the capital and started his first restaurant in Russia (before that, he had had restaurants in various countries in Europe). He recalls that opening a business in Russia was quite simple then: you didn’t need a license, or have to fill out special forms, no checks of any kind were made. All you had to do was to set yourself up in empty premises and get to work. And Mastai selected an excellent spacious place right next to the “Kosmos” Hotel, across the street from the National Economy Exhibition in Moscow.
It so happened that they were always coming across each other in different places.
Then one day Jana came to the restaurant. Usually there were noisy groups sitting at the tables, but here was a girl – all alone. Their eyes met. And after that it so happened that they were always coming across each other in different places, sometimes in the street, sometimes in MacDonald’s. And that happened in a huge city, the capital of Russia! After a few such chance meetings, Renato decided it must be Fate.
“I remember we used to go for walks together. I always got on so well with him, I felt at ease”, Jana says, smiling. “Only it was impossible to go into a restaurant with him. Renato just hated most of the dishes, he could see at once if a salad was left over from midweek. The next thing was that he asked me to come and work for him. He needed someone to handle the administrative side. I realized that I could do that”.
“That was a Quite Different Russia”
But although setting up a business in Moscow in the nineties was not difficult, as most of the foreigners pouring into Russia at that time found, running a restaurant wasn’t easy at all.
“That was a different Russia”, Renato recalls. “Even the big supermarkets were empty, and there were enormous lines for the basic foods. We mostly got produce through foreign friends, and bought it in big batches, straight from their trucks. The restaurant was mostly open in the evening till late at night. There was no particular system in running the business then. You couldn’t even think about Italian haute cuisine. The menu often included canned soup, sometimes macaroni with no meat, we just had to serve what we could get”.
In the “wild nineties”, people often did not have the money even for food. So our Italian acquaintances frequently came in with their families to the sympathetic restaurateur.
“Renato never turned anyone away. He always fed them all and lent the money for a ticket”, Jana recalls. “And when he was running out of cash, he would go to a casino. Oh, what a lot he lost there! Probably more than he earned. But they were happy times all the same…”
The unstable situation, typical of the nineties, affected the social sphere too. So, having a heart problem, Jana preferred to go to Italy to give birth. There their daughter Manuela came into the world. But they did not stay in Italy long. Only three months later, they returned to Moscow, where their business was waiting for them.
So they continued in the capital, carrying on their restaurant business, until, due to high pollution (their apartment was in the center of Moscow), their daughter developed a lung problem. The family had the opportunity to move into a house in the suburbs, they even put down a deposit and begun the paperwork, when another big problem stopped them – traffic jams. Renato would have had to spend at least two hours on the road, morning and evening, every day. He would have ended up just working and driving, and having no other life whatsoever! But that’s Moscow’s reality. Therefore, after two years of her husband trying to persuade her that they should open a business somewhere in the regions, Jana eventually agreed to move to Kirov, her hometown.
New Town, New Opportunities
“When we arrived here, I thought it was a step backwards”, Jana admits. “After all, we had had an apartment in the center of Moscow, and working in one of the best restaurants in the capital brought us into contact with interesting people, often VIPs by Russian standards. At first I felt very bad about it, though I kept it to myself. However, even during the first year in Kirov, I began more and more often catching myself feeling the sensation of happiness. I go everywhere in my own car. And as for shopping, paperwork, driving my daughter to and from school, and stopping in a coffee shop for a snack – I actually have time for all these things! Because here, you don’t get stuck in a traffic jam for hours. And the health service seems to be all right too. There is an up-to-date perinatal center. If I ever have a second child, it will be possible to compare it with Italian clinics. And I am glad that my 16-year-old daughter is studying in a great school, and hasn’t got into the habits of drinking and smoking. There are no drugs! Her surroundings here have given her a taste for reading.”
Jana eventually agreed to move to Kirov, her hometown.
“Yes, our lycee is just what we want!” – Manuela cuts in. “After completing it, it is easy for the graduates to get into economic institutes in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Many continue their studies in England. They give us a good knowledge of foreign languages. Under the cultural exchange program, we take school students from abroad into the family”.…Of course, as for the business, it was not without its difficulties in the new location. For one thing, it took a long time to find suitable premises for a restaurant. One of the first phrases that the couple heard here was “Vyatka has its own way of doing things”, and this local saying made itself felt. In case you don’t know, Vyatka is the historical name of Kirov.
“Sometimes people here have their own unshakeable conviction about something, which can create certain difficulties in understanding the true nature of things”, Jana says. “For example, if guests think that meat should be well done, and Renato knows that it’s better rare, he won’t go along with them. Why spoil expensive meat and turn it into boot leather? If the guests don’t agree, may be, they are not our guests. Mutual understanding with the staff is just as important”.
Cities of half a million like Kirov provide great opportunities for work.
In connection with the keen competition among restaurants, which has come about recently, there are problems with hiring staff. There are dozens of cafes in the town and just about all of them need a cook. Renato demands a lot from his staff. He won’t stand for an untidy appearance or rude manners in dealing with people. However, people who know how to listen to their chef and are eager to learn the secrets of haute cuisine have been working here for years. For example, we as employers are very satisfied with a certain young man who recently came to work in the restaurant, and before him we had two girls as waitresses who got on with their Italian boss from the start.
“Work Your Socks Off!”
“There are tremendously good prospects everywhere in Russia today, not only for restaurants but for any business”, Renato Mastai says. “Cities of half a million like Kirov provide great opportunities for work. And this practically guarantees that a business will succeed. That is why foreigners are making their investments here. Of course there will be difficulties at first, but you have to work wherever you are, whether it is Italy or Russia. There are many similar firms and restaurants in any small Italian town. Family businesses are very popular there. One family runs a bakery, another a butcher’s shop, and a third a laundry. But it’s hard to surprise people abroad. You won’t be able to do anything there except compete with the restaurants already in place. Here it’s an open frontier, the more so because of the policy of Nikita Belykh, the present governor of the Kirov Region, which is directed to helping the development of small businesses and attracting foreign investments”.
You want to open a restaurant? Ask yourself: are you willing to live in it?
However, as Renato says, it doesn’t matter if you are opening a business abroad, in Moscow or in Kirov, everywhere you have to work. And if you want to repeat the achievements of the successful couple, the first thing the Mastai’s advise is to have patience.
“You want to open a restaurant? Ask yourself: are you willing to live in it? Do you want your children and your parents to be there too? To look on it as your home, with only the bed somewhere else?” says Jana. “If you’re ready to work your socks off – welcome! There are quite a lot of premises of all grades available in the town. What’s more, there are so many beautiful women in Kirov! In every square kilometer there are dozens of really hot girls. Foreigners will not be able to ignore such a choice of prospective brides”.
Italian restaurants are a popular form of business in Russia. It is not surprising that after the Mastai’s establishment, cafes and small restaurants with this national cuisine on the menu have been appearing in Kirov periodically. But Renato and Jana are not afraid of competition.
“Dymkovo toys are a brand unique to the Kirov Region. It’s a folk craft of the Vyatka people”, Jana tells us. “And even if people in Perm or Moscow learned how to make them, probably these souvenirs would not be true copies. It’s the same with us. Renato not only has 30 years experience of working in restaurants, but Italian cuisine is his tradition, his culture. It was born with him and now he is bringing his Italy in its true light and taste to the Kirovites. The other businesses in this field in our town are still only rough copies, which our customers’ reactions show.”
“This is the Third Crisis We’ve Been Through Together”
The crisis of the past few years did not fail to affect the restaurant business. And it wasn’t just a matter of people having less money.
“Why are we having difficulties now? We buy quality produce, and everything has gone up in price to crazy levels”, Renato says. “We offer the best wines. We don’t intend to go over to cheaper ones. For an author’s haute-cuisine restaurant, this is not the way. And people who have tried pasta carbonara in various other places in town come back to us because of the special taste ours has”.
This is not surprising. The chef himself controls all the purchases. If it’s meat, it’s only the best quality, but one kilogram (a little over two pounds) of that costs 800 rubles (27 USD), while you can buy other kinds for 160 (5.3 USD) or so.
“When people say ‘It’s expensive’, I can’t really tell them anything”, Jana says with a gesture. “You can’t explain to everyone how the prices are made up. Obviously, the customers themselves have the right to set their priorities when choosing where to go for a business meeting or a private meal”.
An early customer interrupts our conversation. It seems the young man has decided to try out a possible place for a date. But having seen the menu, he was in no hurry to reserve a table.
The restaurant is our family business, and it’s part of my Italy that I have brought here to Vyatka.
“If your girl means a lot to you, you really must come back to us”, Jana says in a kindly voice. “You could order pizza, dessert and wine, for example. This would not cost you any more than the average for the town, but the date would be a memorable one”.
Continuing to discuss the consequences of the crisis, Jana comments than most of the couples they know living in Europe have not withstood the test and have divorced. But here it’s the other way around.
“Those who come to our restaurant include people who own huge factories. It’s hard to imagine how the crisis has affected them, what problems they have faced. People have come in here looking devastated. But here in Kirov, I have not seen divorces”, Jana observes. “Renato and I have the unstable nineties behind us and the 1998 default. And this is the third crisis we have been through together. I have the feeling that our difficulties have only brought us closer to each other”.
Chef of a Home Cooked Supper
One of the fixed traditions of the Mastai family is to have dinner and supper together. During the day they usually eat together in the restaurant. But in the evening, the whole family gathers at the dinner table at home. Jana cooks supper herself. And it isn’t that she has to, it’s how she shows that she cares for those dear to her.
“There’s another secret too. Every morning, a freshly ironed suit is ready for Renato to wear”, Jana tells us. “If I didn’t bother to do it, he would just put on yesterday’s things. And Manuela is into these secrets too. She recently got a boy friend, a young man called Aleksey. We are not making any big plans yet, her school work comes first, but she can already learn how to show warmth and provide comfortable surroundings.”
The Mastai family is not making big plans for the business either.
“The restaurant is our family business, and it’s part of my Italy that I have brought here to Vyatka”, Renato says. “I think a family business is the purest, the most honest, the real one. So we shall carry on working and developing it”.
And of course, the Mastai family is brought together by holidays. Their favorites, the winter ones, are already approaching.
“We celebrate Christmas on December the 25th, in the Roman Catholic tradition. That’s the day Santa Claus leaves presents for each of us”. “And a week later, we have the jolly Russian New Year” cries Manuela joyfully.