An Italian chef developing gourmet clientele in Kyiv
Stefano Zaffrani, the chef at Italian restaurant Mario, was bustling around the table, changing an ashtray and ordering some beverages at the bar. “I can’t feel comfortable until everything looks as I want it to be,” he said while I switched my dictaphone on and off hoping he would finally make himself comfortable in a chair across the table.
The Italian chef, whose restaurants were awarded Michelin stars (a prestigious award given to restaurants for excellence in cooking), came to Kyiv three months ago to become Mario’s chef for one year. His chief aim is to create “a good-level restaurant, not a trattoria (a non-formal type of Italian eatery) because at Mario, there is a 50 percent creative kitchen and 50 percent standard one, like a 1940s trattoria Italiana.”
The restaurant is already making its first steps towards the goal set up by Stefano. During the first days in March, the place welcomed seven foreign chefs, all having been awarded Michelin stars, each of whom presented one dish to the local gourmets. However, Stefano appeared very sceptical, arguing that it’s difficult to find such clientele here.
For him, Ukraine is the second Eastern European country where he has led the life of an expatriate. Before coming to Ukraine, Stefano had experience in Moscow, Dubai, Monte Carlo, Los Angeles, and Tokyo, aside from his long practice in Italy. Enumerating the cities, Stefano proudly noted that in Moscow in 1995, their restaurant had the best service in the world, yet unfortunately “when I came there in 2001, I saw that everything was destroyed,” Stefano sighed. “It was a shock for me.”
Talking with a chef, it’s impossible to omit the subject of shopping and we plunged into a discussion. Stefano, who specializes in fish dishes, likes “to eat fish, go fishing, make pictures of fish, and study fish.” He revealed to me that for a restaurant in Kyiv, it’s possible to buy any fish you want, and it’s even better than buying it abroad. However when it comes to regular folk, there are barely any stores offering a wide choice of fish and seafood. At that, Stefano complained about the high prices for products in Kyiv: “It’s expensive like Tokyo but it’s not Tokyo,” he shook his head smiling. “It’s strange finding arugula here for 30 euro per kilo or expensive genetic products. It must be a good business.” He pointed out that most of Mario’s products are bought from Italy, and claimed they were all natural.
Kyiv’s unjustified expensiveness, according to Stefano, concerns local restaurants as well. “When you eat in a high-level restaurant, you remember the taste of the dish prepared by a chef like Ducasse, you pay a lot and it’s fine. Here you pay a lot, but the dishes are prepared by a cook, not even by the chef,” he said.
Telling me about his work as a chef specializing in creative cuisine, Stefano told me a bit about the process of creating a dish. In Italy with his staff, his sous-chef and designer, he creates 10 to 12 dishes every year and it takes as long as four months to create one dish.
The most important thing during the creative process is “how you feel with the products and with the clients,” Stefano stressed. Like a true aesthete, Stefano emphasized that food and drink is a culture and compared a dish to a good car: “The exterior is the design of a dish; the smell in a car is compared to a smell in a restaurant, where there shouldn’t be the smell of cigarettes, cigars or hookah; the taste of a dish is like comfortable driving,” he said drawing the parallel.
To learn excellent cooking, Stefano explained, there’s no need to enrol in an expensive high-class school, such as Le Notre in Switzerland, where for three days you can pay up to 5,000 euro. The best option, according to Stefano, is studying in a normal school and then working with a good chef – that was actually the path Stefano chose for himself. “The only problem while working with old chefs is the very bad character they have,” Stefano noted, confessing of having a very bad character as well. Nervous work and constant adrenalin accompanies a cook in the kitchen – “A good chef is not a normal person. I don’t know any normal chefs,” Stefano added, smiling.
Another important thing, according to Stefano, is to pay all your attention to your work, practice, and gain experience, but not money.
“The first two years you work without money, then it gives you money but not too much. You can possibly have good money only after ten years of work,” Stefano concluded.
Succeeding as a chef in various countries, Stefano acknowledged that the language and mentality of the staff influences the work process a lot. Thus in Germany for him, it was really tough because of the language, while in Japan, the mentality played a positive role.
“I love Japanese workers,” Stefano said emphatically. “Everything is always clean, they render so much respect, and can copy any dish. Everyday, you have the same taste and the same decoration. Japanese are crazy – it’s possible they have a knife behind their back but when you work well with them, you don’t have problems.”
