Who Is Anatoly Kazakov?

Anatoly Kazakov is a chef who, by the age of 20, already had impressive professional experience and an internship in Italy under a renowned chef. He could have become a successful water polo athlete, but fate had other plans. Landing at a culinary college by chance, he tied his life to cooking for good and achieved impressive results in it. 

Childhood and Early Career

Anatoly is a native Muscovite. He was born into a two-parent family on November 3, 1983. At age 4 his father enrolled him in swimming, and not long after that left the family, leaving his wife with two sons. Their mother worked tirelessly, but supporting two boys was very difficult, so the younger one was sent to be raised in Rybinsk, where his grandparents lived. Anatoly, being a strong swimmer, took up water polo seriously.

The future chef achieved decent success in sports. The coach of the team he played on was former Olympic champion Anatoly Samoylovich Blumental. The team often won various tournaments, including a silver medal at the Russian junior championship. Because sports, in Kazakov's view, couldn't offer financial stability, he never considered it as a career. 

His mother, a practical person, advised the boy to go into cooking, reasoning that this way he'd at least always be fed. College doesn't bring up pleasant memories for Kazakov. Even so, he got excellent grades and became focused and disciplined. Already in his first year he started practicing his cooking, and even started to think he'd chosen the wrong career path, since the people around him didn't regard cooking the way he'd expected. 

Career Path

His very first work experience was an internship at a Defense Ministry canteen. The attitude toward the work was careless, the profession wasn't respected. The future chef was disappointed, and got kicked out of the internship for a fight. 

In 1999, through a personal connection, he got an internship at bar-restaurant "Carlsberg" at the "Kosmos" hotel. From there, after about two years of work, he moved to "Kitezh-Grad"

In 2002, he joined restaurant "Oblomov," part of the "Restaurant Syndicate" holding, as sous chef under Ilya Tyukov, where he worked for about 3 years. 

In 2005, fate offered Kazakov the chance to go on an internship in Italy. Thanks to an acquaintance with connections in the country, he landed, on a student visa, with three-Michelin-star chef Gualtiero Marchesi. After six months of the internship, with a completely different attitude toward the field and the principles of the restaurant business, Anatoly returned to Moscow. 

In 2006, right after returning, he got to work at a place that was iconic at the time, Red Bar in "Tower 2000" on the 27th floor. After that came a brief break for private work. Kazakov cooked for Evgeny Tugolukov until he was invited to take a chef position. 

In 2007, after receiving an invitation to The Most, Anatoly didn't turn it down and went for an interview. There, for more than three years, he cooked classic French cuisine. 

In 2010, he moved to restaurateur Arkady Novikov and took charge of the kitchen at the recently opened restaurant Bon. 

In 2013, he took the chef position at restaurant The Hills, moving to restaurateur Zaturinsky, owner of the large-scale WRF holding. Later came the Zodiac project. 

Since 2014, the just-opened Selfie has become the chef's true "home," where he's been treating guests to simple yet refined dishes to this day.

Since 2022, at the gastro-theater Ikra, he's been presenting his signature sets "Svoy Sredi Chuzhikh" ("One of Us Among Strangers") and "The Silk Road." 

Besides that, he's brand chef at restaurant "Gvidon" and Benedict in Moscow, as well as Selfie in Nur-Sultan. He also developed the chef concept for restaurants Fox and Mushrooms. 

Achievements and Awards

His track record of culinary wins began in 2012. That's when the chef won the "Silver Triangle" competition, becoming Best Young Chef. Six months later came the international S.Pellegrino Cooking Cup, where Kazakov was a finalist. In 2017, restaurant Selfie, whose kitchen Anatoly ran, took 88th place on "The World's 50 Best Restaurants" list.

A year later the gap closed, and the restaurant now held 70th place; that same year, French guide Gault&Millau named the chef the best and awarded "Selfie" four toques on a five-point scale. In 2019, the ranking spot changed to 65, and GQ magazine also recognized Kazakov as the most outstanding chef. In 2021, he received one of the most important awards — a red Michelin star. 

A Professional Take on Cuisine 

Over the course of his professional development, Anatoly Kazakov used a range of cooking techniques, worked with a variety of ingredients, and drew on a wide array of cuisines from around the world. Today he's come to believe that food should be simple, clear, elegant, and have a clean flavor. Seasonal ingredients, collaboration with small farms (about 14 across Russia), care for the environment, and support for the principles of mindful consumption — those are the core principles on which chef Kazakov builds his work.