BORSCHT REDUCTION
By Stas Shectman

 

Chef Anatoly Komm has one modest dream: to be to Russian cuisine what the Bolshoi Theater is to Russian culture. And if you believe the hype, this should be a piece of cake

As evening spreads across the restless Russian capital, the pace picks up at Varvary. In the kitchen, the cooks power up the tools of their trade—centrifuges, vacuum chambers, a lyophilisiation freeze-drier. Servers polish crystal and set the tables with silver. The doorman dons his fox-fur cap, complete with tail, and takes his position at the entrance. Everyone prepares for the arrival of the night’s dinner guests. The barbarians are at the gates.

Five nights a week they come to Anatoly Komm’s new Moscow restaurant, Varvary, where he feeds them a nine-course dinner that lasts nearly three hours. Sometimes they applaud, sometimes they scratch their heads and wonder at the strange colors and unfamiliar textures of the food that arrives at their tables. To the strains of live harp music, they wield heavy, expensive silverware and sip from delicate crystal glasses. They are learning to eat.

Rye Bread and Solt (Photo by Artefact)

“We Russians have done much to earn the West’s perception of us as savages,” says the 41-year-old Komm, explaining the name of his restaurant—Russian, as you might have guessed, for “Barbarians.” “After all, it was we who brewed mulled wine out of Petrus [one of the most expensive Bordeaux wines]. It was we who ordered black caviar by the kilogram only to put out our cigarettes in it. But that time has passed.”

If there is one man working in Russia today who could put the country on the world culinary map, that man is Komm. Since opening his first Moscow restaurant, Green, in 2001, Komm has become the golden child of the city’s gourmet dining scene. With five restaurants to his name, he is one of the few chefs in Moscow who also owns his own establishments—no small feat given the high level of investment and dismal rate of success for new eateries in the capital. He is the only Russian chef to have had a restaurant listed in the Michelin Guide (albeit in Geneva). And at the 2007 Congress of Lo Mejor de la Gastronomia, the World Economic Forum of cuisine, he became the first Russian to make a presentation to the distinguished panel of international chefs.

Long before its January premiere, Varvary was already being touted as “the first Russian haute cuisine restaurant” and burdened with feverishly high hopes. As early as last March, one Moscow restaurant critic dared to dream that, should Varvary work out for Komm, Russia’s march onto the world culinary stage would follow. As seems to be the case with every major or minor talent Russia squeezes out these days, Komm is being positioned as the savior, the ambassador, the Great White Hope.

For his part, the chef paints his self-confidence and ambition in a subtler shade. “Varvary is my dig at Europe for thinking of us like that,” he says. “What I want is for people to come here, to my barbarian kingdom, and see what kind of barbarians we really are.”

Varvari Restaurant Interior (Photo by Artefact)

So: what kind? The kind that has just discovered molecular cuisine, apparently. A half-sphere of something dark and pudding-like topped by a glassy white spiral arrives on a spoon. In your mouth it somehow becomes black bread, unrefined sunflower oil and salt—staples of the Russian table. Two balls of ice cream, one red and one pink, carry the startlingly singular flavors of the traditional vinegret and Olivier salads. Over the course of one of Komm’s “spectacles,” as he refers to his dinners, the chef re-engineers the country’s adored, familiar, starchy comfort foods as light, elegant and completely confounding foams, sprays and gels.

Ironically, this kind of ultra-scientific approach to cooking, influenced by Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti and French chemist Herve This, has echoes of the Russian “food futurists” of the ’20s and ’30s, who hoped to marshal science into feeding

the Soviet Union’s hungry masses with nutritious super-foods. Those dreams faded into the reality of Soviet life, but Komm insists that the Russians were laying the groundwork for molecular cuisine long before it became high art in Europe. Sure, they weren’t exploring why soufflés rise, why mayonnaise hardens or how our brains translate nerve signals into flavor, but for Komm it’s technique, not fashion, that matters.

“It’s just another, natural step in the evolution of cooking,” he points out, shrugging off suggestions that he is following a fad. “When ancient man first started cooking with fire, do you think someone came along and said, ‘oh, is fire the new trend now?’”

He may have a point. It’s not Komm’s clever distillations of folk tradition into abstraction (a bowl of borscht reduced to two bites, a fluffy foam that explodes with the taste of pickled herring in mayonnaise) that makes Varvary the great hope of Russian cuisine. Komm’s true innovation is that his kitchen uses only Russian products. In a city where menus brag about tomatoes flown in from Tuscany, and all things local are automatically considered substandard, Komm’s faith in Russian products is rare and impressive. “National cuisine,” says Komm simply, “can only be based on national products.”

The décor, naturally, picks up that theme. Varvary looks unmistakably Russian. Framed hand-made lacework commissioned from local artisans adorns the sleek, black-and-silver walls. Rich carpets printed in the style of khokhloma, a 17th-century folk print, stretch out beneath opulent tables and ornate, hand-carved chairs. The overall effect is restrained gaudiness, a blend of Russian opulence with European sophistication and style. There is no à la carte menu, just two choices of “spectacles”—Russian Tradition or Russian Renaissance. “To be perfectly honest, asking questions about my work is pointless,” says Komm in his typically self-assured manner. “If you really want to hear what I’m saying with my food, if you really want to listen to me, you would come to my restaurant and sit down to one of my spectacles. Only then would you really understand.” And, in what is perhaps the most authentic Russian-renaissance touch, for “listening” to Komm, diners can expect to drop about $200 per person. Not counting alcohol. Ь