Having arrived in the capital of Ukraine only for a day, the famous restaurateur told about his business and gastronomic passions of celebrities.

It seems that there aren’t many establishments more expensive than this one in Kyiv. A bottle of French vine Chateau Petruce costs here about seven thousand hryvnias, sushi made dish – from 210 to 500 hryvnias, and a helping of meat and fish made dish for two, containing marble meat, dairy lamb with ribs, duck sternum, salmon, giant scallop, squid, rock lobster tail, and royal shrimp – from 900 to 1500 hryvnias. The restaurant was visited by Vitaliy and Volodymyr Klychko, Andriy Shevchenko, Girard Depardieau, Paulo Koelho, Mila Yovovich et al.

The Premier Palace Hotel opened a summer ground of Japanese restaurant Sumosan. Sumosan is the third project of restaurateur Alexander Volkov, who, by the way, was born in Ukraine. The first Sumosan is in Moscow, the second one was opened in London in 2002. The predecessors have got an excellent reputation. E.g., the English Sumosan is one of ten best London restaurants. Though the influential newspaper The Guardian in due time wrote: "One can hardly be fond of Sumosan" and was indignant at 160 pound bill, which is not very much according to Kyiv measuring.

"Singer Christina Aguilera and actor Robert de Niro were our guests"

The owner of this establishment, restaurateur Alexander Volkov, famous in Europe, who arrived in Kyiv only for a day, also has restaurants with Japanese cookery in Moscow and in London… In the capital of Great Britain Volkov’s Sumosan is one of ten best restaurants.

- Alexander Mikhaylovich, is it true that you were the first businessman from the Independent State Union, who opened a restaurant abroad?

- Yes, it was four years ago, in London, - tells Alexander Volkov, the owner of the network of Japanese restaurants Sumosan. – London is one of cookery capital cities of the world. Here the service and cookery quality is one of the highest. But I took a risk… And already in a month or two my restaurant became quite popular with the Englishmen, megastars of fashion and cinema started visiting it. Among our guests there were Dolce and Gabbana, singer Christina Aguilera, singer Lion Ricci, actor Robert de Niro… It’s impossible to mention everyone!

- I see that Hollywood stars are lining up in a queue to your restaurant…

- Well, that’s certainly an exaggeration, - smiles my interlocutor. – But different things happen. For example, this year on the eve of Saint Valentine’s Day there were a hundred times more applications for booking a table in our restaurant than of tables themselves. And here we receive a call from a firm – another order. But we didn’t have a single vacant table! So we had to refuse politely. And later on we learnt that it was an order for Madonna.

- How do you attract your clients? There are lots of Japanese restaurants, but gourmets are coming to you!

- We attract them with the highest quality of food, service, dishes. Where else can you see sushi with goose liver, marble meat, Peking duck? It’s our invention, know-how. There is even sushi with lard. However, you can taste them only in Kyiv. (A helping of sushi with lard which with weight of 33 grams in Kyiv Sumosan costs 90 hryvnias! – Auth. note.).

- Tell us about gastronomic passions of your renown guests.

- I think it wouldn’t be proper to disclose them. I can only mention their names – Witney Hewston, Naomi Campbell, Kate Moss, Enrique Iglesias, Harrison Ford, Boris Becker, Marat Safin, Eugeniy Kafelnikov… Is that enough? Not infrequently my daughter and I have a talk to them, but as often we try not to come to them at all, not to disturb, not to prevent them from eating. Believe me, it’s very important to eat in a calm surrounding, where no one disturbs you with questions. And public people appreciate it very much.

But it happens, that out guests themselves want to have a talk. For example, Lion Ricci talked to my daughter and me all evening. Christina Aguilera visited us in accompaniment of two giant bodyguards and after diner asked for a restaurant reference book, where she expressed her gratitude. Dolce and Gabbana also gave their thanks to our cookery in oral. As regards the food the celebrities ordered, I will reply: often people come to taste something new. Only Naomi Campbell, in addition to other dishes, always orders raw sweet shrimp.

“Where do I live? In the airplane!”

- Do the visitors ask you for cookery receipts?

- Yes, it happened. One of our most popular desserts is “Muraveynik” cake. It is baked according to my grandmother’s receipt. Biscuits, condensed milk, poppy-seed, raspberry sauce… It’s absolutely delicious! One Russian oligarch even sent his cook to our restaurant “to take a course”, for he liked “Muraveynik” very much.

- Alexander Mikhalovich, are you a millionaire?

- In hryvnias or in dollars? – suddenly asks my interlocutor with surprise. – In hryvnias – yes, for a long time. I’m not a poor man. I think I could earn much mire in other spheres of business. But restaurant for me is more than business. That’s already a lifestyle.

- I heard that you come from Odessa.

- I spent my childhood and young years in Odessa, but I was born in Boryspil. Once I happened to take a flight with Liubov Uspenskaya, and when the plane started landing she exclaimed: “At last I am in my motherland!” And I said: “Is it you in the motherland? No, that’s me in the motherland!”

- What country do you live in?

- Mainly I live… in the airplane. My family is in Berlin, my elder daughter is in London, she studied there and she also is a restaurateur. And I’m mainly on the way. It happens, that I spend in the airplane seven days a week.

- Reveal us a secret, how to become a rich man?

- In this regard my daughter usually says: if you want to become rich in the restaurant business, work for the poor. It means for the fast food. But our restaurants are exclusive, there cannot be lots of them. That’s why I think that selling fast food would bring more money than I earn today.

- Japanese restaurants are now emerging like mushrooms after rain. Aren’t you afraid that the fashion for Japanese cookery will pass soon?

- No. Now we are on the peak. Look: in 1997 in Moscow there were only four Japanese restaurants. Ours was the fifth. Today there are some three hundred of them, no less. Believe me, the admirer of Japanese cookery is unlikely to cease to love it.

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