Not long to wait for discoveries – Style – Kommersant

The duet of chefs and restaurateurs Artem Losev and Vitaly Istomin has added several more iconic restaurants to the collection of successful projects and is not going to stop.

Loona and Patriki restaurants in 2022 have become new points of attraction not only for advanced youth, but also for the business audience, the beau monde, and everyone interested in modern gastronomy.

This year, Losev and Istomin plan to open several more projects at Patriky, and their goal is 3-4 new restaurants in 2023.

“We are trying to occupy niches that are not yet occupied. Now in Patricki, I believe, there is no decent Asian restaurant, and we are going to fix this very soon, ”says Istomin.

An Asian restaurant with author’s cuisine will open instead of the Vkusvill grocery store at the very beginning of Bolshaya Bronnaya. “It will be our own vision of Asian cuisine, not a classic one,” Istomin adds.

As practice has shown, no one, even the most experienced restaurateur, can calculate the success of a restaurant. But still, I want to ask this question to each of them: what, in fact, is the key to success?

“We have a good eye, we travel a lot, analyze, get inspired, but what I consider the most important is that we are in dialogue with our audience, we feel it subtly. We are not just chefs, now we are restaurateurs, and this gives us the opportunity to control all stages of work,” says Losev. “Of course, the right positioning and team is very important. It has developed for us, it even has the name Ava team – this is restaurateur Anton Pinsky, restaurateur chefs Artem Losev and Vitaly Istomin, PR manager Anna Boyko, ”he adds.

The guys experiment a lot, their cuisine cannot be attributed to any one trend. They have developed their own recognizable style, and their main goal is to cook delicious food. What is important: Losev-Istomin’s cuisine is modern and suitable for every day. Why not only sushi without rice from Patriki cafe, which are not only delicious, but also very photogenic, and pizza without dough in Loona.

“The most difficult thing is not just that they come to you in a new restaurant, but come back again and again,” says Istomin.

It is important that with all the obviously expensive surroundings and details, including white tablecloths on every table and the most premium locations in the center of the capital, they manage to keep an adequate price tag and at the exit visitors receive a non-shocking check.

But still, food and taste remain the main values, the guys are proud of them. “Before opening a restaurant, we do a lot of research, we try dishes long before the restaurant is ready. Pizza for Loona, for example, we worked out for two months, added flour, semolina, salt, something, on the contrary, was reduced. We know what we want, and we go to the final dishes not in a week, ”says Losev.

“I will never cook meals with foods that I do not like. This is my honesty with myself and the guests: what I myself do not eat, I will not offer to the guests, ”Istomin notes.

Vitaly and Artem dream of opening an African restaurant, because this is new for Moscow: a mix of exotic spices, meat and open fire. The first studies have already been made, a search is underway for a business partner for this idea.

Olga Karpova