An innovative chef is selling good taste to increasingly affluent Russian diners, writes Susan Glasser in Moscow

Fine dining in Russia was still an oxymoron when Arkady Novikov opened his first restaurant, in the early 1990s. Food was a practical matter, dining out a frustrating exercise in what was available - usually mayonnaise-laden salads, over-fried cutlets of indeterminate origin and side dishes heavy on the sour cream.

Opulent palaces for the newly rich had sprung up, places that were all about what Novikov calls "the show": Silver Age, where the gimmick was a nightly auction of a long-stemmed red rose in which the going price usually topped €800, or Maxim's, where managers fondly recounted stories such as the one about a €15,000 tab run up by the Moscow mayor and his friends and then paid on the spot - in cash.

Novikov, a Soviet cooking-school graduate rejected for a job at Moscow's first McDonald's, had a different idea. He would sell good taste to the city's fledgling capitalists. "They didn't know there was a difference between Pepsi and Coke," he recalls, or, sometimes, even "how to use a knife and fork properly". The 41-year-old has no burly bodyguards; his mobile phone is the only office he has. But he's the undisputed restaurant king of the new Moscow, his growing empire of 60 restaurants an encyclopedia of food chic in a booming city. Admirers say he has taught a generation of rich Russians how to eat and drink well.

He has grown with his customers, Novikov says. "They've been to the best restaurants in the world by now. They know the difference now between good mozzarella and bad, and even between good mozzarella and very good."

Moscow is the scene of more hot restaurant openings than anywhere in Europe, according to industry analysts, who say Russia is riding a wave of oil dollars right into the haute-cuisine kitchen. Not a week goes by without a sleek new spot opening - experts don't know exactly, but they say 30 to 40 restaurants are starting up each month - and none is more popular than Novikov's. Even he can't remember how many restaurants he has opened in the past year. "Maybe 10," he says. "I'm not counting really."

Each restaurant costs at least €750,000, Novikov says, and he brings in London interior designers, Italian chefs and French partners.

"Novikov is a brand already," says restaurant critic Svetlana Kesoyan. "Each new restaurant of Novikov is an event."

Oxana Soleil, executive director of Restaurants' Rating Moscow, says: "During the last two years we've had many restaurant openings, and most of the grandest belonged to Arkady Novikov." Her firm will release the first Time Out-style guide to the city's hot spots this autumn, and three of the top five are Novikov's. Although many diners complain about the high prices for less-than-world-calibre food in Moscow, Soleil says, when it comes to Novikov's places they just want a table.

The rapidly growing Novikov portfolio includes highbrow ethnic at eye- popping prices, sleek French-inspired Asian fusion, Tsarist hunt country, jet-set generic. Some are mid-priced spots aimed at the emerging middle class. But the restaurants he is famous for are the upscale ones, where Mercedes SUVs line up outside and bills easily hit €100 or more per person.

In a city with more billionaires than anywhere else in the world (36 and counting, according to Forbes magazine), Novikov unapologetically caters to the fantastically rich post-Soviet.

Gallery is Novikov's latest creation. It is quiet at lunchtime in this tasteful refuge of muted chocolate browns and blacks. The exhibit of oversize photographs of gorgeous Moscow women - Novikov's florist wife included - is titled Beauties, and that is how the Novikov clientele likes to think of itself.

Since its February opening it has been packed every evening. The menu is a study in freedom of choice - no lectures here about the proper way to spend one's newly acquired funds.

"To understand food you need money," Novikov says.

This current epicentre of chic is only a few blocks from Novikov's other see-and-be-seen spot of the moment, Vogue Café. A joint venture with the Condé Nast glossy magazine, the restaurant is hung with pictures of many of the models who go there. He acknowledges that the dining experience in some of his restaurants is secondary to the tysovka experience, the Russian equivalent of a happening.

"Good food is just a plus," he says.

In the past few years there's been an outbreak of good taste among his customers, who spend as much as ever but profess to do it more discreetly. "Simple food" is their new mantra, dieting and yoga their new hobbies. A craze for sushi inaugurated the minimalist era among the Moscow elite; today raw fish is a staple of nearly every ambitious restaurant menu in the landlocked city.

Kesoyan, restaurant critic for the magazine Afisha, says Novikov's restaurants are centres of innovation, bringing a "European attitude" to Russia. Novikov, she says, was among the first to understand that "the time of the Disneyland restaurants is over in Moscow". Novikov is "not afraid to experiment," she says. At Vogue Café he hired a Russian chef - a daring move - and put kefir, a traditional Russian drink of sour yogurt, on the menu with European dishes. At Gallery, Kesoyan points out, "he serves chicken cutlets - absolutely regular home cooking - as well as the expensive cognac".

Like his clients, Novikov didn't start out with a yearning for truffles and brandy. He grew up poor in an apartment so small there wasn't room for a bicycle even if his family could have afforded one. His mother and grandmother were good cooks in the Russian tradition, but mostly that meant doing well with what was available: fried meat and potatoes with mushrooms and kasha, or buckwheat porridge.

In the late 1970s Novikov's dream was to become a chef at a Soviet embassy, a glimpse at the forbidden world just as alluring to him as the idea of cooking. He signed up as a member of the Communist Party. "In principle," he says now, "I even believed."

When McDonald's arrived, in 1990, Novikov became one of the city's most famous rejectees. Even today, he says, he thanks the McDonald's executive George Cohon every time he shows up at one of Novikov's restaurants for having the good sense not to hire him.

In 1992 Novikov borrowed €40,000 from a friend and scored his first hit, with Sirena, a fish place with an aquarium in the see-through floor. In the beginning he was not immune to the lures of "the show". Most of his early successes were variations on it, gaudy spots such as White Sun of the Desert, with a Central Asian decor based on a popular Soviet-era film of the same name, Russian girls dressed as belly dancers, live cockfights and an overflowing buffet of Uzbek delicacies costing €50 or more a person. The main hint of what was to come was the food, which was far better than at the era's other showplaces.

"There is no show now," he says. "The time is all but past." His new dream is a restaurant that would serve a Russian nouvelle cuisine, based on traditional foods but lightened up and modernised. But his latest project is an Italian food-and-wine place in partnership with the Italian wine firm Antinori. The idea is fewer models and more serious eaters. Novikov calls it his "first real restaurant". ... - Washington Post Service