General Manager Datuk Yong Soo
Heong, in Moscow for the first time to attend the 15th General
Assembly of the Organisation of Asia-Pacific News Agencies (OANA), says the
trip is an eye-opener.
“Certainly a big kampung at
one time that’s change into a world city,” he said in a tweet after arriving on
Sept 16.
After all the meetings and
successfully getting Bernama for another three-year term in the OANA Executive
Board, Datuk Yong finally found time to make his way to the popular Arbat
Street today.
“…rainy and cold &
expensive,” he said on Twitter.
While in Moscow, he met the
Malaysian ambassador Datuk Zainal Abidin Omar and came
across a young Malaysian chef Rashidin Abdul Rashid.
“He cooks private dinners
for Russian Prime Minister Dimitry Medvedev,” he said on Bernama ED-Team
WhatsApps.
“Can you imagine? Makes
RM70k a night,” said Datuk Yong, who emailed his story along with a photo of
the young chef which he took with his Samsung phone.
Datuk Yong was among the
OANA delegates who met the Russian Prime Minister at his office as part of the
programme organised by Itar-Tass.
The 109 year-old Russian
news agency will head OANA until 2016.
This is the story of the young
Malaysian chef who has impressed the elite crowd In Moscow with his fusion food,
filed by Datuk Yong:
MOSCOW, Sept 21 (Bernama) --
A young Malaysian chef, Rashidin Abdul Rashid, is making waves among the
jet-set and new rich in the Moscow restaurant scene with his Pan-Asian fusion
cuisine.
And the 32-year-old from
Seberang Perai in Penang makes no less than RM70,000 a night at RONI along
Petrovka Street, right smack in the high-end shopping district where the
priciest and swankiest Moscow department store TSUM is located and just a
stone's throw from the Red Square and Kremlin.
That's not all. His creativity
in the kitchen and rave reviews from food critics have also catapulted him to
fame and cook private dinners for the rich and famous, among them Russian prime
minister Dmitry Medvedev.
He has also been flown on
private jets by Russian billionaires to cook at theme parties in Monaco and
other parts of Europe.
And he can count on
celebrities like supermodel Kate Moss and actress Elizabeth Hurley as among his
customers.
So what is exactly
Rashidin's Pan-Asian fusion cuisine that has earned him his celebrity status
and making him more popular by the day?
"It's about making use
of what is available or known in Asian cuisines and preparing them to suit the
Russian taste. So I take samples of Malay, Chinese, Indian, Thai, Japanese,
Korean and other types of Asian cooking and use my creativity to turn them into
dishes that will be well-liked by the people here," Rashidin, who used to
work at the KL Hilton and Shangri-la in Kuala Lumpur, told Bernama in an
interview at his almost packed restaurant.
For example, if one takes
apart his Kamchatka crab noodles, it is actually the famous Malaysian dish of
"mi kari", which usually has a heavy dose of chilly paste, coconut
milk, chicken and cockles.
But Rashidin has tweaked all
that to a dish that has a subtle hint of chilly stirred in coconut milk and
milk encompassing rice noodles with adequate portions of the gigantic Kamchatka
crab meat and fresh vegetables as garnishing.
A diner has to fork out
almost RM50 for a small bowl but that is chicken feed to the scores of
well-to-do people who come to his restaurant for "every bit of Asia".
Rashidin offers some 70
types of dishes ranging from shashimi, dim-sum, rendang to kimchi at his
restaurant. But he is always experimenting and he usually does this in the late
afternoon after the busy lunch hours and before the dining crowd fills his
restaurant at night.
He wins the hearts of his
diners by letting them try his new creations for free and if the feedback is
good, then that dish will be soon on special offer or the recipe is filed away
for use at another time.
"I have even mi mamak
done in a style that's well-liked by the Russians," says Rashidin, also
known as the innovative and trendy Chef Mamu, who came to Moscow seven years
ago.
It all started when he had
finished his two-year cooking stint at a hotel in the Maldives that he was
asked by another chef to try it out in Moscow.
From a so-called
"apprentice", he became a sensation after six months in a restaurant
owned by famous Russian restaurateur Arkadij Novikov, who three years later
asked Rashidin to start a new restaurant, the present RONI.
The creativity in Rashidin
makes all the difference and sets RONI apart from other restaurants in Moscow.
And his personal touch with
the diners takes his reputation several notches higher.
Rashidin takes the trouble
to sit down with diners after their meal and ask for feedback. And he makes
them feel on top of the world when he tells them that they can phone him ahead
of their next visit so that he can whip out something to suit their palate.
With his status as a
celebrity chef who occasionally cooks for the Russian prime minister, such a
gesture makes for terrific public relations for Rashidin.
"The trouble with such
an offer is that sometimes the diners, many of whom have become my friends,
won't want to come to my restaurant if I am not working on certain days,"
he explains.
Rashidin's growing
reputation among the elite crowd has also made Malaysia's ambassador to the
Russian Federation, Datuk Zainal Abidin Omar, extremely proud.
"When people find out
that I am from Malaysia, they often ask me whether I had dined at RONI's,"
he says.
Tan Yang Thai, the Minister
Counsellor at the Malaysian embassy here, says Rashidin has been able to
capitalise on the rising demand among well-to-do Russians looking for exotic
tastes.
"He does it very well
because of his creativity in coming out with a variety of dishes from almost
all parts of Asia," he said.
For Rashidin, it looks he is
going to stay in Moscow for a good number of years.
"The money is good, the
people here are willing to spend and so here I am," he says, adding that
not knowing the Russian language when he first came was not a barrier for him
as he made his food do all the talking.
"My boss told me to
concentrate on producing good food. To be successful as a chef in a foreign
country, you need to give full concentration to your job and nothing
else," says Rashidin, whose boss, Novikov, has also helped him to open a
Chinese-style noodle shop just a few doors from RONI on a profit-sharing
arrangement.
-- BERNAMA
