Meet chef Vladimir Mukhin
Chefs Vladimir Mukhin (right) with his chef de cuisine Emanuel Alvarado at Crab Market Dubai
Chef Vladimir Mukhin is busy fiddling with the #crabporn that is Kamchatka crab on his iced shellfish display at his first Dubai restaurant, and his first outside Russia and Kazakhstan. We’re at Crab Market which opened earlier this year in the DIFC district, where him and his team are prepping to launch brunch for the new season (more here on that – and here’s my dinner review).
He is all smiles (‘super funny’ is his favourite term), and his command of English is much better than I expect given his Chef’s Table episode was filmed in Russian. His flagship restaurant, one of a staggering 25, White Rabbit, which, next month, celebrates its seventh anniversary, now sits at no 15 on the World’s 50 Best list. No mean feat given he’s only 35 years old. But he is a fifth generation chef. We sit down over espressos – a chef staple – to chat US embargoes, Deira fish market, and going up and down the World’s 50 Best ranking. Enjoy the read 🙂
I saw on your Instagram Stories that you were at Deira fish market early this morning. What did you buy for Crab Market? We bought some Omani prawns, tuna and dates. I rarely buy tuna but it was amazing.
Where was it from? I think it was yellow fin from Sri Lanka, even though they said it was local! The sea here is too hot for tuna.
How many times have you visited Dubai? I think I’ve been here ten or 11 times.
What are your impressions? I really like the local food.
When you say local, do you mean Emirati, or broader Levantine cuisine, which is more prevalent? Lebanese. I have never tried Emirati food as I never understand what it is. I have tried dishes like baba ghanoush and houmous. I want to learn. I get inspiration from everything. Yesterday in the morning when I arrived at my hotel – Roda Al Murooj – somebody gave me Arabic coffee from the pot. It was incredible. I never tried coffee like this and I asked him what is this. I thought there was cumin in it, or something similar, and he said, this is Arabic coffee.
It’s cardamom in boiled coffee. Yes! It was incredible. I want this coffee here. Just yesterday we told the general manager about this. I can’t stop seeking inspiration – it’s my life. I get something from everywhere – from the people; from the markets. Today at Deira market, I asked about dates. It was the first time to try the fresh ones. I asked if they have vinegar from this, so I asked our chef to make it.
We have a local company here, Bateel – a big producer and retailer of dates that sells a wonderful date balsamic vinegar. That’s very interesting thank you. I will get the details from you. Food must touch the culture. I walked here even though it’s hot and everyone said I need a driver. It’s like a jungle here with all the buildings and that inspires me.
Crab Market’s table d’hote brunch
How much of your produce here at Crab Market is locally sourced? I really struggle to source locally here in Dubai. In Russia we have an embargo, yet we grow everything. We bring a lot of stuff from Moscow to Dubai, and also tomatoes from Uzbekistan. I have six farms for White Rabbit that work perfectly for us. Tomatoes. Zucchini. Cabbage. Some are on the rooftop in the middle of the Moscow, but inside is a perfect ecosystem and the produce is so good. I really want to work with local ingredients though as this is my style.
We have lots of local farms here in the UAE – you and your chef here should visit them. Thank you – yes I will!
Who is your chef de cuisine at Crab Market? Emanuel Alvarado. He was working at Totora before [since closed]. A very good Peruvian guy who has travelled around the world with his family. He knows a lot about food, not just ceviche! He is one of 12 children and would cook for his family all the time.
In Dubai because we can import pretty much any produce from anywhere in the world year-round, we don’t see seasonal menus much. How often will you change the menu here? I want to make our menu seasonal. Now is the perfect season for chanterelles and black porcini mushrooms – why don’t we use them? That was my question and request yesterday to the team.
I saw on Chef’s Table that you benefited from the previous US embargo [in 2014] because you were already sourcing locally, hence the consumer appetite for it. Does that still continue with the current embargo? Yes and we continue to work with Russian ingredients. The concept of White Rabbit is modern Russian cuisine. Travelling within Russia, I choose a lot of old techniques and ingredients. I bring some heirloom seeds into my restaurant and I grow tomatoes, cucumbers. We cook on charcoal and a Russian wooden stove, which is a signature of Russian cuisine. We balance between sweet and sour tastes. We have a very good quality, grass fed, dry-aged Russian beef. We also use a horse ‘jamon’ from Kazakhstan.
How would you describe modern Russian cuisine? When you look at the food, it looks futuristic, but when you close your eyes, and taste, it is 100 per cent Russian flavours. Sweet. Sour. Smokey. Pickled. Fermented. One example of a dish, is our cabbage pie. A year ago last October, one of my farmers, 140km from Moscow called me crying because it was -5C and she forgot to harvest the cabbage and it completely froze. Around 300 pieces. I said “bring it to me; I want to try something.” I burnt it on the Russian wooden stove amongst the charcoal – and inside it was like crispy beef with sweetness, like with ice wine. So we now flash freeze the cabbage and burn it before service, cut it, and make three different kinds of sauce, one with scallops – and we mix it all with three different kinds of caviar – white caviar, trout caviar and black sturgeon caviar.
A silver lining – a good example of creativity arising from a mistake. Yes!
You have 25 restaurants in Russia, Dubai and Kazakhstan – including a food market concept in Moscow. Tell me about this one. It’s like a street food market of 21 stalls, inspired by dishes from our travels around the world. I brought the shawarma from Dubai to Moscow. It’s incredible. Somebody said that there is no inspiration from Dubai. No, that’s not true. I am inspired here all the time.
You’re a fifth generation chef. At any point did you aspire to be anything other than a chef? Now I do! But not before. My father asked me whether I wanted to become a chef or a policeman, but I had already decided to become a chef. I have around me 2,000 people across 25 restaurants. When I open a restaurant, it’s a new world. A lot of people work for me not just for the money; they’re working for ideas, and we want to be better than yesterday because it’s more than just the food. We gym together; in the morning we run; we fence. They are my family. We create the dishes. Every week we travel outside Moscow because I really like old Russia, from the pre-Soviet days.
What did you learn from your internship with the Roca brothers? A lot. First of all you must understand, I was already a young chef when I went to the Roca brothers over seven years ago [before White Rabbit]. I learnt that chefs must stick and work together. Everyone in the kitchen brings something special. Joan [Roca] first asked me “so what do you want to do in my restaurant?” I said, “I want to learn in a chef position.” He said, “okay, but you must start with the preparation.” I said, “I don’t need it, I can work on the pass or as an executive chef.” He said, “okay tomorrow I will put you on a station”, and the next day I realised nobody spoke English – only Spanish! I didn’t understand anybody. It was super funny. I was in the shit really and the next day I said to Joan “thank you so much”. I really learnt from that observation and he said “now you understand that the team around us is very important because if you are just one in the kitchen, you are nothing. You must unite and only then can you win.”
So it’s all about teamwork. Yes, and the journey is more important than the destination.
You have moved up and down the World’s 50 Best List, and now sit at no 15. You were also featured on Chef’s Table. Which drove more bookings to White Rabbit? Both. When we made the list at 100 and then 71, nothing changed, until we hit the 23rd spot [in 2015]. It was an incredible time for us because we were not ready. A lot of people were coming from different parts of the world. None of our waiters spoke English. Our menus were in Russian only. In Russia, nobody speaks English. We worked hard for one year to change a lot of things – we created the chef’s table, and every Friday we pair small cocktails with the food. It’s like gastronomic theatre; like Alice in Wonderland; like a crazy rabbit – super funny. People have to book three to four months before, which is unusual for Russia as you don’t have to make a booking anywhere else. We then rose to 18th in 2016, but dropped to 23rd spot again in 2017. We worked harder and this year got to 15th. With Chef’s Table, our international guests want to order the moose lips [a prominent feature in the episode]. In Russia, Netflix is not popular.
What’s next for you? I want to concentrate on pop-up events. I just did one in an art gallery in Moscow. I asked guests to bring an ingredient, which we displayed, on one table. We discussed these ingredients, and the inspiration from the gallery – and then we cooked with those ingredients. It was amazing. I want to cook at a pop-up on the Champs-Elysées.
Paris is a natural progression for you because Russia took their ‘service à la Russe’ [course-by-course sequential service] to France. Yes, it’s true. We have a lot inspiration from other countries. If you look at Russian cuisine we have a lot of borscht soup, from the time of the terrible Peter The Great who opened the door to Europe, everybody says.
Have you tried Crab Market or White Rabbit?
A bientôt.
FooDiva. x
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