Nikita
Tataev

When I was young, I liked to hang out in posh night clubs, and then I discovered that I could work there as well. That’s how I became the promoter at Leto club, which was then transformed into Dyagilev. At Dyagilev, I met Anna, my future wife, over some business. Then, there was Imperia (Empire) club, and after Imperia, the era of clubs began to die down. The club culture of the 2000s faded away, along with the dollar exchange rate of those years, along with the oligarchs, fashion models, and orange-colored Bentley. We were thinking about what to do next, took a six-month trip to Los Angeles, and when we returned to Moscow, my partners suggested several venues. The stars were aligned: there was a place and there was money, and we just had to put it all together like a construction set and launch. We decided to open a karaoke bar. It didn’t work out from the get-go, but today, our Quadrille is the best karaoke in Russia. And gradually, we moved from one project to the next, and then the next one, and so on. It was a money tree of sorts. We first planted a small shrub, then branched it out and planted a new one nearby. We grew those and then went further, planted the third one. Once the three have taken root, we look around to see what else is there. After karaoke, we went into the restaurant business. Back then, there was no fear that something won’t work. There’s a venue, there is money, there is an idea — simply take it and run with it. How do things usually happen in Moscow? The projects launch with a bang, and then they die quietly. We work differently. We may search a whole year for the concept, spend the second year adapting and growing, and in the third year everything is going to be as it should. For a long time, our first restaurant, Tkemali, didn’t behave the way we thought it would. And three restaurants had closed in this place before us. But we know how to work, how to make it so that everything comes to a boil so to speak — and today, there are rarely free tables there. Cape was supposed to become a continuation of our boutique Japanese restaurant, Coba. We found a place, created one design concept, another, third one, but finally realized that this is just not Japan. And then Anna remembered about the restaurants of chef Liam Tomlin, which we visited in South Africa, and she wrote to him.