Aussie chef Glen Ballis building Russian restaurant empire
AN Australian chef is helping revitalise Moscow’s culinary scene, opening a string of restaurants across the Russian capital. And it’s all down to a late-night chat with Vladimir Putin.
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AN Australian chef is helping revitalise Moscow’s culinary scene, opening a string of restaurants and cafes across the Russian capital.
Glen Ballis, 52, from Montmorency in Victoria, is one of hundreds of chefs helping Moscow shed its reputation for stodgy food and become more cosmopolitan.
He arrived on a three-month contract back in 2006, and is still there 11 years later, bringing quality food, coffee and wine to a city not high on any foodie’s bucket list just a few years ago.
And he decided to stay after Russian President Vladimir Putin convinced him the city had a bright future.
“I served a full Australian barramundi to Putin,’’ Ballis told News Corp over coffee at his latest venue, a hip venue called Remy Kitchen Bakery in the lively Baumana district, in central Moscow.
“He’d heard there was an Australian chef and he invited me to his table to talk.’’
That was in a previous venture run by Ballis, who’d been in the crowded, chaotic Russian capital for a year, enduring its minus 20 degree winters, and thought he’d had enough.
“At that point I wanted to leave. He (Putin) said ‘Russia’s a good place, there’s a lot happening here, in the future it will be a good place to live’.
“We spoke about Australia and how I’d cooked for him in Shanghai once before at an APEC
conference.
“He said, ‘It’s still a land of opportunity’.
“Everything he said to me was correct.’’
Ballis did his chef’s apprenticeship at a hotel in Port Melbourne, worked at Neon Café in South Melbourne, then moved to Queensland, pursuing a laid-back surfing lifestyle at Noosa, and opening his own restaurant, Mango Tango, at Mooloolaba.
Things were good — then the pilot’s strike in 1989 brought the tourism industry to its knees — and Ballis’ restaurant with it.
“Tourists couldn’t get in. Everything collapsed, as did we,’’ he recalled.
“The restaurant was still doing OK but it wasn’t making any money.’’
Jaded and exhausted, Ballis thought he might get out of the trade altogether but he loved life on the beach, and ended up working in the kitchen at the Hyatt at Coolum.
There, he rediscovered his love of food and cooking, and worked there for five years.
“In the end it was a good experience for me. It was a tough time and I had to dust myself off,’’ he said.
Then the travel bug bit, and he travelled and cooked his way around Asia before moving to Europe and finding himself cooking in one of the restaurants in the world’s most famous department stores, Harrods, in London, owned at the time by billionaire Mohamed al-Fayed, whose son Dodi had died with Princess Diana in a car accident in Paris in 1997.
After two years with Harrods, he was surfing in the south of France when he got a call from Arkady Novikov, the Russian restaurant baron, who heard about him through a mutual friend and wanted to him to come and work at his new, $14 million venture in Moscow called Nedalny Vostok.
Ballis accepted the gig as executive chef on a three-month contract and the high-end restaurant was opened in late 2006.
“It was the first open kitchen, flames, woks,’’ he recalled.
“We looked after basically anyone who through at that time, it was the hot spot at that time.
“The King of Spain, Putin, movie stars and their agents, any European royalty that were here.
“We never served anything under $US100 a plate.
“Aerosmith came through one night. We opened at 1am for them after a concert so they could have lobster. It was wild — they were throwing the giant pumpkins around.
“Then it all came crashing down, when the economic crisis it.
“It was full right up until the day it (the global economic meltdown) hit the news.’’
Ballis stayed on, and went on to open venues including Glenuill, Cutfish, Zupperia, Remy Kitchen Bakery, Roni and Mendeleev. He’s about to open a new place, Margarita and now employs about 250 people.
He said his time in the industry was fun but stressful as he didn’t speak Russian in the early days.
“I’d ask for carrots and they’d bring out a chicken,’’ he said.
“It took a lot of structure to make it work.’’
Ballis also owns three restaurants in Singapore with his 30-year-old son Daniel, who he describes as his best friend.
“I speak to him every single day of the week, we travel a couple of times a year and eat food
together,’’ he said.
He is married to a Russian woman, Marina, and they have a nine-year-old daughter called Eva. Both Marina and Eva are fluent in Russian and English.
Ballis admits he is moving at a breakneck pace opening new venues across Moscow, but said he had to make the most of the opportunities while they were available.
“I’m a realist. When you are at the top of a cycle, there’s also a bottom of that cycle, so I am pushing through as hard as I can.
“I love it here. At this stage in my life I can’t imagine being anywhere else.’’