Moscow boasts being cosmopolitan, offering recognizable food from global chains like McDonald's, Starbucks and Nobu. But if you like fish and chips, you are in trouble.
The lack of restaurants offering cheap fish is all the more surprising because one of Russia's biggest natural resources is its plentiful supply of seafood — a reality that once prompted the Soviet government to force people to eat fish.
The Russian government, borrowing a page from the Soviet playbook but with a more capitalistic hue, has decided that it is high time to open a chain of inexpensive fish and chips kiosks that draw on the country's bountiful catch and has even selected a company to run the operation.
But there is a catch: Mayor Yury Luzhkov isn't cooperating, said the federal official promoting the undertaking, Andrei Krainy, head of the Federal Fisheries Agency.
City Hall has fired back that Krainy is promoting the interests of a single company instead of holding a tender for the outdoor stands and suggested that he might be up to something, um, fishy.
The clash between the federal agency and City Hall provides a rare glimpse into a power struggle between federal and regional authorities and highlights the difficulties of creating a successful business in Russia's unique brand of capitalism.
Hungry customers and healthy profits are only part of the formula for a flourishing restaurant, said Yekaterina Razina, a spokeswoman for Rosinter, which operates 340 restaurants, including T.G.I. Friday's and Planet Sushi, in Russia and eight other countries.
"Half of the success will be if the Federal Fisheries Agency supports the delivery of quality fish, if the leasing of land under the mobile eateries comes at a reasonable price, and if there is no red tape with the documents," Razina said.
She said she saw a market niche for inexpensive, quality fish and chips in Moscow.
Krainy, whose agency is tasked with promoting the consumption of the domestic fish to help local fish producers, also sees an unfilled niche for fish and chips kiosks, both in Moscow and abroad. He said the kiosks could buy supplies of cod directly from Russian fishermen, bypassing middlemen.
Krainy complained recently that he had sent several letters to Luzhkov outlining his ideas but received no reply.
“He is the only person among federal and regional officials who is not answering my letters. London, Berlin and Paris have already named locations where a Russian company could put its kiosks, but Moscow is silent,” Krainy said in an interview published in Rossiiskaya Gazeta, the government's mouthpiece, on Jan. 13.
Krainy said that as a result, Russia's first fast-food chain might open outside of Russia.
Krainy's plan envisions the creation of 500 kiosks in Moscow operating under the brand name Okean, which is the same name as the company that he wants to oversee the eateries.
Krainy’s complaints provoked a heated response from Luzhkov spokesman Sergei Tsoi, who told Rossiiskaya Gazeta on Jan. 14 that all companies and other entities, including the Federal Fisheries Agency, should participate in tenders if they want municipal locations for their outlets.
The war of words escalated this week, with Tsoi accusing Krainy's agency of pursuing financial profit in its fish and chips campaign.
?€?If the agency organizes this business, and since it is a government entity, I have a question: Will these 500 fish outlets be registered to the agency or to private companies??€? he said in an interview with Russian News Service radio on Monday.
Tsoi also denied that City Hall had received any letters from Krainy?€™s office about the fast-food proposal. The only letter that City Hall could find was an agency request dated June 2009 in which Krainy asked the city to provide municipal space at minimal rent to set up a single seafood store operated by the Okean company, he said.
The Federal Fisheries Agency kicked off a campaign to promote fish consumption last year that included dozens of Moscow billboards reading, "Fish Is Waiting for You."
The name Okean dates back to Soviet times as the name of a store chain that sold fresh fish around the country. When Josef Stalin was leader, the government designated Thursday as fish day, a day when restaurants and cafeterias were ordered to serve only fish to promote fish consumption.
Alexander Ivanov, head of the Okean company, which is working with the fisheries agency, told The Moscow Times that he had all the facilities in place to develop a chain of fish and chips kiosks in Moscow.
Ivanov added that kiosks would serve domestically caught cod purchased directly from producers and be based on the model used in Britain, where fish and chips is a national food. He said a lunch of three pieces of fish, French fries and a salad would cost 110 rubles ($4), or about 1.5 times more than the price of a McDonald's fish sandwich.
But Ivanov said City Hall's demands for a tender were unreasonable because it would be ?€?impossible to win?€? municipal tenders because of corruption. ?€?You know how tenders are organized in Moscow. I would never be able to win them,?€? he said.
Last year, several corruption scandals broke out over City Hall tenders. One of them led to the arrest of Sergei Tatinsyan, deputy head of the city's tender commission, after businesses complained to law enforcement officials that he had exhorted bribes in exchange for the right to participate in tenders.
The city?€™s fast-food market was more than $3 billion in 2007, the latest year for which estimates are available, according to Discovery Research Group, a marketing agency.
Ivanov declined to say how much he was ready to invest in the fish fast-food chain in Moscow, but he told Vedomosti in November that startup capital for 300 kiosks would amount to more than $10 million.
Asked why the Federal Fisheries Agency is backing Ivanov, spokesman Alexander Savelyev said the agency would be open to working with "any company able to give quality seafood products to Russian citizens.?€? He also noted that Ivanov was a member of a public council on small and midsize businesses operating under the auspices of the agency.
Ivanov's background is in the fishing industry, but he said he has fast-food experience as the founder of Moscow Food, which makes and delivers pizza and sushi around the city and operates a sushi bar. He also heads Murmansk-based Nord-Stream, a fish processing company.
Russian fishermen reported a catch of 3 million tons of fish last year, an increase of 11 percent from the previous year as the Federal Fisheries Agency cracked down on poaching and illegal exports. But high transportation costs and a lack of proper logistics often make the price of Russian fish sold in Moscow and other big cities more expensive than that of imported fish.
At least one group of investors has tried to open a fish and chips restaurant in Moscow in the past. The restaurant, Paul MacBride's, opened in 1999 near the Novokuznetskaya metro station with an English menu of battered cod and fat, chunky chips, Cornish pasties and fish cakes. It didn't last long and closed amid reports of a falling out between its foreign and Russian investors and low demand from diners put off by high prices.