Everyone's Doing His Salsa

In the kitchens of the Autoelectric Institute, a mini-revolution has occurred.On one counter, a Russian cook folds burritos with expert fingers; on another, neat rows of plastic containers filled with beans and chopped vegetables await delivery; on a third, a chili-filled taco bowl topped with a perfect tomato rosette awaits a consumer. This is the territory of Steve Meneely, a.k.a. Taco Steve, and his Mexican-food producing company of the same name.Last December, Meneely took over the canteen, which fed the institutes's 2,500 employees before closing for lack of funding, and transformed it into the heart of a new fast-food operation, cooking, packaging and delivering burritos, tacos, salsas and chilis to satisfy Moscow's surprising passion for tex-mex."People just want something new," Meneely says, as explanation of the city's enthusiasm for Mexico's answer to bliny. "They've been eating the same things for generations."The idea for the company came to Meneely, 40, during his work for Progressive Educational Growth, a non-profit group that helps 137 farmers working 90 acres of greenhouses in the region. The inefficiencies of a system that left vegetables to rot in the field set Meneely searching for effective ways to get produce onto the market. The solution he favored was converting the produce into fillings for tacos and burritos.Meneely consulted the U.S. corporation that first brought him to Russia a year ago to advise on the design of kitchens for Soviet-era sanatoriums that were being converted into luxury hotels, and the Americans gave him the go-ahead to set up Taco Steve.The company began operation in February and is expanding rapidly, Meneely says. Undeterred by Mayor Yury Luzhkov's kiosk-blitzing campaign, he is going ahead with plans for a chain of kiosks, and his small office is bedecked with tentative Taco Steve logo designs that will decorate the stalls. The company also hopes to open up in St. Petersburg soon, and Meneely has a trip to Surgut planned next week to carry the Mexican message to Siberia.Meneely says part of the reason for the firm's rapid success has been his inheritance, from the institute, of a complete set of cooks who had known each other and worked together for at least 10 years and found themselves, when the canteen closed, in need of a job. Another has been his rejection of the usual heavy-handed insistence on Western methods."I'm not trying to reinvent the wheel," he says. "We do things the Russian way. Trying to force people to do things the Western way would be like beating your head against a wall."Working in a fresh market with a great desire to try new things has also made it easier for Meneely to get his products into shops and restaurants, he says. Persuading the Russian hard-currency store Olbi Diplomat, for example, to stock his line of burritos required no very forceful sales pitch."I walked in there with it, they didn't even try it and they ordered it," he says. "I'm told it's doing very well."Originally from near Sioux City in Iowa, Meneely spent seven years in the catering business in the San Francisco area, first as a chef in an Italian restaurant and later running a chain of espresso stores, before selling up everything he owned and moving to Russia. The move wasn't the first or the most dramatic of Meneely's life: Before California, he worked for 12 years as a stockbroker in New York City until disillusionment led him to abandon life in a suit."I didn't like the way Wall Street was going as far as companies' attitudes toward their clients was concerned. The big brokerage firms tended to be more interested in their own bottom lines," he says. "It was a moral call ... and I've never regretted it."Still enthusiastically developing new recipes as part of his Mexican line and discussing plans for a range of pasta sauces that could dent the giant Uncle Ben's monopoly, Meneely has no intention of returning to the United States for the moment."I don't ever see the day I'm going to leave," he says. "I'm looking at long-term commitments with this project."