Accountant Ivanov. Waiter Romanov.

Two restaurants in one week — Moscow has never seen anything like it. On April 2, fish brasserie Anchovy's Club opened its doors on Kolokolnikov Lane near Tsvetnoy Boulevard, and Spanish-Portuguese restaurant Padron on Strastnoy is projected to open as soon as April 8. 

— What's it like opening two restaurants in one week?

Veniamin Ivanov: You feel a bit like Anton Pinsky, but not for long. Then you realize he'll keep opening restaurants every week going forward, and you won't be doing that again for another two years. Honestly, at Anchovy's Club, which we opened in partnership with Dreamteam, the guys help a lot with operations — it's easier than if the two of us had opened both restaurants entirely on our own. 

Romanov: In this case, we believe more than ever in what we've made, that it turned out really great — both in terms of the concept and the texture of the spaces inside. Even though the location isn't Nikitskaya or Patriki. But the closer we get to opening, the more confidence we have — the product sells itself, and we're trying to make it really good.

Now that you have five restaurants, do you feel like big-time restaurateurs? Do you even think about who you are, fundamentally?

Ivanov: Overall, judging by what we do and how much we make, we're still accountant Ivanov and waiter Romanov. One hardworking, distinctive person with taste. The other, cocky and self-assured, but decisive. And together we complement each other really well. I hope we're at least not idiots.
Romanov: I'm a bit of a slacker and a bit of an egoist. Can I talk badly about myself, though? I can drop everything and go steam myself at the banya, because today's my banya day. Or go shopping with my family because I decided to. Veniamin, on the other hand, is a workaholic. Ivanov: I'm hyper-responsible. If it were possible to bring a phone into the steam room, I probably would.

Romanov: I love movies. I used to work as a manager, a director, at the Pioneer cinema. That's where I fell in love with film, with arthouse. I rewatched all of Woody Allen, adored him, had all his DVDs. If some premiere is coming out, I look for the first cinema that isn't shy about screening a pirated copy, drive out to Butovo or somewhere, and watch it. Already watched Dune, it was great. Boris Zarkov recently recommended "Shōgun" to everyone — "Shōgun" is amazing, Boris really does have taste after all. I'm a cinephile. But naturally, these days, whenever some series starts, I fall asleep halfway through the episode, because I'm a tired cinephile. Veniamin works me to death.

Ivanov: A hobby! Restaurants are a hobby. I don't have much to tell about myself. I'm a young guy, an entrepreneur, I have a finance company, I work a lot. No thinking person achieves their goals just by working. But for the last two years, my goal has been building entrepreneurship, and 90% of my life is made up of that. Nothing interests me besides professional activity.  I guess my active outlook on life is basically what I do. The thinking process, philosophy — that's what fascinates me. Unfortunately, these days there aren't many people to share that with and develop that skill together.

Romanov: I'm also a Spartak Moscow fan, though I have mixed feelings about what's going on there. Ivanov: and I'm completely outside of sports, don't know anything about it — not tennis, not basketball, not football. Romanov: I think our partnership develops you too. At the very least, it makes you look after yourself — trim your eyebrows, pluck stray hairs, think a little about shopping. I'm a shopaholic myself, for instance, especially in the past. I love clothes, love throwing them out afterward once I realize I won't wear them anymore. And Veniamin's caught a bit of that from me, probably his wife helped too. Ivanov: that development is debatable though... Romanov: no, honestly it's a sore subject — you need to learn to pick clothes that'll suit you long-term, that go with your basic wardrobe.

Ivanov: is this interview supposed to make the reader hate us? We're people who are nobody yet. We're at the very start of our careers. We're trying to do things, and in ten years or so we'll become someone.  Right now we're pretty young, and it's too early to talk about any achievements. Napoleon, after all, had conquered half the world by thirty.

What business duo would you compare yourselves to?

Ivanov: Dima likes comparing us to the Jobs-and-Wozniak duo — like, he's Jobs, all creative like that. But I want to point out that Jobs was a workaholic and didn't drop everything for a banya day. But looks-wise, one of us is thin, the other stockier, one flamboyant and confident, the other more hardworking. Jobs seems like the more winning role, sure, but in real life Jobs is already dead, while Wozniak's still around with a couple hundred million dollars. So I'm ready for that role, on balance it suits me fine. Since all intellectuals tend to be pretty modest, you need some jerk nearby who'll make abrupt, unfounded decisions, and then you'll be the one dragging the whole scheme up off its knees afterward.

Romanov: But without that, we wouldn't have five restaurants. Honestly, we make all the key decisions together, discuss everything, and find a compromise. We haven't quite figured out how it works, probably some kind of chemistry. We recently ran a tasting. We've somehow calibrated things so that we only ever run tastings the two of us, a third person is always one too many. It turns out to be really cool magic — you just need to get into the flow, and a decision comes to us in the process of brainstorming, sometimes even a fun one. It's really great.

Ivanov: Overall, I'm more in charge of finance, analytics, and numbers. Dima handles service and design, he's very demanding and that's a good thing — in our business, being soft usually doesn't get you anywhere. Say, for Anchovy's Club, we decided to make a wall blue. I found a reference online, and this wall has this worn-looking texture, like the plaster's crumbled off. And Dima says we need to do it. We did, and I'm looking at it thinking it doesn't seem all that cool. But the guy starts describing, colorfully and very intelligently, why it's necessary, and you start thinking maybe he's right, I mean what's a blue wall without any texture, and here it's like some extra spark gets added that conservative thinking often won't let you keep.

You just said a third person is always one too many — and yet a third person often shows up in your collaborations. Where do they come from, how do you choose them, and what role do you trust them with?

They come about because of different degrees of necessity. In Folk's case, we needed a media strategic partner at a stage when we didn't amount to anything yet and were just setting out on our own — that turned out to be Anton Pinsky. Right now we have a new collaboration with Alexey Burov, and there it's a completely different scheme, where we're the product people and visionaries, and Lyosha organizes operations, investment, and other support — his beer expertise is a maximum-synergy fit. In none of our collaborations does the "third" get involved in the product, they basically don't touch the product side at all.  But overall, we don't set out to always be doing some kind of partnership. In Padron we don't have partners, we have two strong chefs — concept by Adrian Quetglas and brand by Evgeny Tsyganov — and it's a self-contained project. Going forward, we're not afraid to just do everything ourselves.

You opened three restaurants on Tsvetnoy — Folk, Amber, Anchovy's Club. And suddenly decided to open Padron on Strastnoy — do you believe you can get that one going too?

Ivanov: There's a huge problem with venues in Moscow. All of Patriki is already overcrowded, Nikitskaya is overloaded too. So in search of a new location and new inspiration, we thought, why not take a spot right in the middle, between Patriki and Tsvetnoy Boulevard? And build a project there that, we think, could draw interest even out in Sviblovo. Because the concept's cohesiveness, the team we brought in, the designs, combining a restaurant with a speakeasy bar — all of that guarantees you success, because the layout of the space, the windows, and the possibility of a terrace right in the center let you pull it off.

Romanov: it's a great space, and it feels like we haven't done a better project than this yet.

The most expensive mistake you've made?

Ivanov: There were two expensive mistakes. Choosing a designer on one of the projects — that cost us about 6 million total. But the most expensive one is the windows at Amber. We first bought a set of windows for 4 million, then spent a million replacing them, and now we're putting in another set for 4 more.

Romanov: Sometimes you think you can suddenly make something great happen with designers who've never really proven themselves, or not-very-well-known builders — you get these little lapses in judgment sometimes. And you keep believing, believing, believing, and then you realize it's time to say thanks and goodbye. We've already done two restaurants with essentially our own design.

Ivanov: More precisely, with design bureau "VeDi" — Veniamin and Dmitry. The startup idea has already popped into my head, no other lunatic would ever come up with a name like that for a design bureau.

Romanov: In three of the four restaurants we've built, the layout is ours. For Folk, Padron, and Anchovy's Club, we drew it all out, literally on a scrap of paper. It usually happens like this: we meet up at some restaurant, drink carefully, and start sketching, brainstorming, getting creative. I even have a photo on my phone of how it all got dreamed up.

Ivanov: We recently almost made a second 5-million mistake. At one point, for restaurant Padron, we decided to finish the speakeasy bar's ceiling and walls in traditional Portuguese azulejo tile. It's hand-painted, and this particular tile depicted a specific scene from port wine production. The designers got inspired by the idea, found some reference material in Portugal, and decided to add a little spice. Unfortunately, I have to admit I'm the one who put the idea in their heads myself, after visiting the Uffizi Gallery in Florence and seeing a pile of portraits and paintings there where every artist tried to capture himself or a family member. And when I shared that thought with the designers, they decided we should add a bit of me and Dima into the scene. But it wasn't a bit, and on every single face depicted on the tile — which costs five million, took three months to make, and weighs about three tons, making it a huge pain to install on the walls — there was an image of one of our faces. Including a chubby cupid with little wings shaped like banknotes. And it wasn't exactly high art either, more like a caricature. It added an extra edge of spice that, right after this whole thing was installed, we had to show the restaurant to our investor.  As luck would have it, cars had to be parked in the back courtyard, so the first thing he'd see walking into the restaurant would be walls of gorgeous azulejo tile depicting our faces. And without knowing this backstory, the only thing the investor could have thought was that a couple of maximally young and vain bastards decided to plaster the whole wall with their own faces, on his dime.

What other location would you like to conquer?

We're not saying. (laughs)