You're reading: Odessa saturated with upscale eateries

In this seaside town, affordable diners are a better prospect than high-end restaurants

After Kyiv, Odessa may be the most progressive restaurant town in the country.
The past several years have seen diners’ choices expand from the usual selection of inexpensive cafes and snack bars to a more international, if not cosmopolitan, collection of spots offering everything from Mexican to Mediterranean cuisine.

With high- and low-end options covered, the region’s restaurateurs are setting their sights on the growing middle-income population, and developing concepts that will appeal to these consumers.

“We rejected the idea of opening a high-end restaurant, opting to cater to the middle-class on a level higher than they expect with their incomes,” said Igor Goncharko, proprietor of Fat Moses, a trendy but affordable restaurant in central Odessa.

“We want to create a spirit in the restaurant that will encourage customers to spend lots of time there. Waiters smile,” he said. “Customers come to us not only to eat, but for the environment.”

Goncharko is co-owner of Zara Pizzeria, Buffalo 99, Mario’s, Cocolata Cafe and the Pobeda Art Cafe. Goncharko, who said that the art cafe was influenced by Eric Aigner’s Art Club 44 in Kyiv, acknowledged that Western-style restaurants have been pivotal in helping him to form his own vision of restaurant culture. He added that his most valuable experience came from working in a number of restaurants abroad.

“Some go abroad to sightsee, but I went there for ideas: to feel the spirit of the restaurants,” he said. He studied their interior design, menus and the recipes, he said.

Budapest proved to be a restaurant Mecca, and he picked up a lot of ideas for his own restaurant concept there.

“The opening of Mick O’Neill’s Irish Pub in 1996 was the beginning of Odessa’s restaurant culture,” he said. “Foreign chefs and managers were invited to build the pub. Foreigners have helped us a lot to create our own client-friendly restaurant culture.”

Odessa needs foreign investment to help the restaurant scene continue to improve, he said.

“We need foreigners to open up new eateries,” he said. “There are currently a lot of chefs in Odessa, local people, who’ve gained their work experience abroad. But it isn’t the same as having foreigners on staff.”

When Goncharko opened his first restaurant, Buffalo 99 in 1999, its chef and consultant was Scottish.

With its sports-bar ambiance, Buffalo 99 was an immediate success. But the increasing numbers of restaurants in Odessa means that today, customers have choices, and restaurateurs must work harder.

“It took us 20 days to promote Buffalo,” Goncharko recalled. “Zara Pizzeria’s promotion took six months. And now the situation is different because it’ll take a year to promote a restaurant and begin earning stable revenue.”

Michael McDermott, co-owner of Estrellita’s, a Mexican restaurant, said that three years ago there were only about six solid restaurants in the city, including Buffalo 99, Fat Moses, Fidel, O’Neill’s Irish Bar and Clara Bara. That made the entry of a Mexican-themed place quite easy. Today, he estimated that the city has 20 respectable restaurants.

“You have as much selection [in Odessa] as you do in Kyiv. The market here is saturated, in terms of high-end restaurants,” he said.

McDermott said that there is still room for smaller restaurants, where lower overhead makes them easier to operate successfully. “Small, specialized restaurants serving French or Italian food could do well,” he said.

However, the only restaurants opening in Odessa now are Pan Pizza outlets, McDermott said. The inexpensive fast-food restaurants are “the only market being developed right now,” McDermott said.

When opening the first Pan Pizza in 1993, Savely Libkin and his partner adopted a concept similar to that used by McDonald’s in the United States: quick drive-through service.

The Western concept of a quick, casual meal costing less than $6 turned out to be the key to the company’s success. The company presently has 17 Pan Pizza outlets, offering Italian and European cuisine and seating for between 50 to 180 patrons. Odessa is home to 12 of them, the remaining five are in Kyiv. Another outlet is due to open in Kherson this month, Libkin said.

Aligning his restaurant vision with that of the city, a resort for modest-income Ukrainian tourists, Libkin has provided inexpensive dining options for travelers. In casual dining, Libkin’ says that the meal is number one.

“Drive-ins have always positioned themselves as places where people eat,” he said. “Whether an eatery is expensive or more affordable, it is very important that the meal be a good value for the price. In Kyiv, people pay more for atmosphere than for the meal itself.”

Libkin’s “the food comes first” policy proved effective in 1997 when he opened the fashionable Steak House restaurant featuring Tex-Mex American cuisine on the city’s main downtown thoroughfare. His 1998 Greenwich restaurant serves up European pret-a-porter cuisine, the menu designed by French chef Evangelisti and Russian chef Astakhov. Both restaurants earned quick success, he said.

“We were actually surprised by our success,” he said.

And he was obviously pleased, too. Libkin plans to open a Mediterranean-style restaurant in Odessa, with the capacity to serve 200, and another Pan Pizza in Kyiv.

Meanwhile, Goncharko has developed a quintessential European cafe called Coco Lata cafe. Opened last January, the cafe so far has attracted a predominantly foreign clientele who come to chat over coffee and sandwiches.