The most successful Russian restaurateur in London on doing business with oligarchs and Putin

What happened

Daily Ringtone
Sep 7, 2018 · 3 min read

Restaurateur Mikhail Zelman is the most successful Russian restaurateur in the West. In the early 2010s, his restaurant Burger & Lobster was a London hit. The businessman now has 10 restaurants in the UK, two in New York, and one each in Kuala Lumpur, Stockholm and Dubai. In Moscow, Zelman was the co-owner of one of Russia’s largest restaurant chains, but at the beginning of the 2010s he sold his stake in to his business partner, metallurgical billionaire Iskander Makhmudov, and left for London. The Bell founder Liza Osetinskaya interviewed Zelman for our video project, “Russians are OK!”. Here are the most interesting quotes.

On emigration

“I left because I understood that I can’t be a part of what is happening in Russia. [I understood that] I’m excited, but I’m not getting any internal rewards, I’m becoming more nervous, unhealthy, angry and ruthless. I want to be kind and good and to derive pleasure from what I do. I actually left my former self behind. The Misha Zelman who was in Russia, and the Misha who wanted to see his own future — they were in conflict with each other.”

On the restaurant business in the UK and Russia

“The restaurant business in Russia doesn’t differ at all from what we have here [in London]. But there is one difference: here you pay a lawyer while in Russia we paid bribes to officials. In Russia a bribe is a means of communicating, a means of coming to an agreement, of forming business relations. In society there are no normal ways of building relationships, and a bribe brings you closer to a person, it connects you. Many people pay and take bribes not because they need more money, but because it is a means of establishing relationships.”

On doing business with an oligarch

“It was 1996–1997. We were, in a good sense, so limited in our choices and stupid that we decided: now we’ll build a business empire! I needed a partner because in Russia you need some kind of protection. This protection could be provided by gangsters, the police or an oligarch. Of course, I chose the third option. We became friends, first and foremost. We spent time together. They came to my restaurant. And when I was in a partnership with Iskander Makhmudov, no one tried to take a bite out of my little restaurants.

Оn Putin and power in Russia

“One of the problems of our country is that neither Dmitry Medvedev nor Vladimir Putin have done anything with their lives. They are hereditary bureaucrats, and therefore we have created a country of bureaucrats. Putin and those currently in power are products of the Soviet Union. They want to recreate not the Soviet Union, but their own youth, their youthful maximalism. This goes down well in a country which lived through a shock [in the 1990s]. Letting Putin into power was a catastrophic mistake. Not because he is a bad person. He is actually a very good person: he invited his friends, they became rich people, he doesn’t turn on them. But a different kind of person was needed. It wouldn’t have been a disaster if they’d given power to people who were slightly different, with a different viewpoint. It is impossible to grow a business in an autocratic country because a business is a competitor and an autocracy implies there is no competition. It’s better now in Russia than during the time of serfdom when 2% of the population lived as parasites at the expense of the remaining 98% of the population. Now it’s the opposite: 98% live as parasites off the 2% who produce oil, gas and metals.”

Peter Mironenko

This newsletter is made with the support of the Investigative Reporting Program at UC Berkeley.

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