Put Down the Gun and Eat

Not long ago a friend of mine -- I'll call him Sergei -- had a visit from his "roof": his protection boss. The boss was fed up. He was sick to death, he said, of going to shiny new restaurants filled with hoods and hookers and noisy foreigners, and of throwing good money away on food he couldn't identify and which no one, in any case, knew how to prepare. He wanted a place where he could get decent borscht and honest chicken tabaka at a price that ordinary Russians could afford. He wanted a place where he could take his mother, he said, and not feel ashamed. Sergei thought about this for a while and began looking around. Not long afterwards he found an unoccupied shopfront on a side street not far from downtown. The rent proved reasonable, and to his astonishment his application for a restaurant license was granted immediately, without him having to offer any bribes at all. Soon afterwards, he moved into the shopfront and began to remodel the interior and put in a kitchen. His workers were honest and hard-working. And though the health and fire inspectors made it plain at first that they were going to need major money if the restaurant was going to pass muster, they proved astonishingly helpful once he'd explained what he was trying to do. They assisted him in getting all the necessary permissions and even refused the "presents" that he pressed on them in gratitude. Sergei, of course, was somewhat puzzled by all this kindness. So he made inquiries in the neighborhood about who controlled the street. No one, he was told. It was just, well, a street. There was a police precinct house nearby, and the police chief was an upright man who took care of the area's security. There were no kickbacks or turf wars here. It was a little oasis of comparative sanity in the general madness of the city. Not believing his luck, Sergei finally opened up the restaurant, which he called Tatyana's, in honor of his mother. It's doing wonderfully well. It's a modest little place, with a scattering of tables outside on the sidewalk. It has gingham tablecloths, an unpretentious menu and a blackboard announcing the daily specials, and a zinc bar presided over by a menacing-looking but entirely genial giant named Andrei. The morning crowd comes in for a coffee and cognac on the way to work, or just to sit around and read the papers. At night, the place dances with candlelight and hums with quiet, intense conversation. It's understood at Tatyana's that everyone has to be on their best behavior, partly because Sergei's "roof" comes in at least once a week with his mother, a teacher at one of the institutes known to one and all as Mama Klara. Well, now that your curiosity is up and your taste buds are in full cry, I am going to have to disappoint you. For none of this is true, of course. (And if it were, I certainly wouldn't be telling you about it -- I'd keep Tatyana's a deep, dark secret.) In real life, my friend Sergei would have had to pay out millions of rubles for all his permissions. His workers would have been a disorganized, thieving rabble (unless they were foreigners). And he would have had to lay out at least 15 percent of the restaurant's profits for protection. As a result, Tatyana's would have become a joint like all the ones we know already: way beyond ordinary Russians' pockets. Overpriced, over-pretentious and over here. Given this, I want to make a modest proposal, which I would like to be brought up at the next council meeting of the city's crime bosses. Why can't we have a restaurant like Tatyana's which is neutral ground, which is understood to be a no-man's-land where ordinary Russians -- your mothers and fathers and children -- can go? More than this, why can't we have a whole area of the city which is bright and appealing and which serves good food? You may know from your travels, gentlemen -- or from talk with some of your foreign associates -- that there is just such a place in New York City. It's called Little Italy, a place where I once lived. When I moved in, I was solemnly interviewed by the local ward captain, to make sure that I was no threat to my neighbors. It was entirely safe, and filled with good restaurants. The only person murdered there in my time was a mafia boss who had broken every rule in the book. So the ball's in your court, gentlemen. It is up to you. As things are, high prices and general mayhem are driving away the tourists, who are very good business. And they're also working against the pleasure and welfare of your nearest and dearest. Give us a break, then. Give us an enclave. You can call it Little Odessa -- and have the name Tatyana for free.