Kazmyaso Platforma is the only restaurant in Central Asia with its own herd of bulls. It’s Black Angus – originally from Scotland, the bulls thrive in Kazakhstan’s mountains and Alpine-like meadows. We grow the feed for the herd ourselves, have our own feedlot, butchery and a dry aging chamber.
The nose-to-tail restaurant, however small, serves a menu of steakhouse classics, from marrow bone tartare to dry aged beef burger and a wide selection of dry- and wet-aged cuts. They make their breads and charcuterie (including horse bresaola, beef nduja and chorizo, duck prosciutto and saiga jamon) in-house. They use as much of local produce as possible, and work with local proteins such as horse and camel meat (using the latter for camel burgers, prosciuttos and dry aging).
Kazmyaso Platforma is women-owned and run, including the head chef and butcher, Svetlana Khaninaeva, who trained in the art of cutting meat and charcuterie across the globe, including with Christian Puglisi at Relae (Copenhagen) and Brad Farmerie at Saxon+Parole (New York).
Behind this ambitious concept is a passionate team led by a visionary chef, determined to create an unparalleled dining experience. In the following interview, we dive into the inspirations, challenges, and future plans of KazMyaso, exploring what makes this restaurant stand out in Almaty’s competitive culinary scene.
How did you come up with the idea to open KazMyaso and where does your passion with meat start (how the name came up, the concept, why meat)
I first arrived in Kazakhstan seven years ago and immediately fell in love with the people and the local product. I started working in the kitchen at the ripe age of 28, and I have worked in many places like New York, Copenhagen, Moscow, Tel Aviv (where I met Dario Cecchini) before coming here. Back then, I had already understood that I wanted to work with meat. In Israel, I worked in a butchery that had its own restaurant, and that concept was pretty much what I wanted to build here. But to build the restaurant I wanted – the restaurant with the best meat offer in the city – I had to find the best meat in the country. So I set out to search for good local product, and it took me two years to find the herd of four thousand Black Anguses I am working with today.
Kazmyaso, our head company (Kazmyaso translates as “Kazakh meat”) uses world-class practices in rearing beef. We are considered one of the most advanced companies in beef rearing and processing in Kazakhstan, and the country grows and eats a lot of meat – for every three persons in the country, there is a live cow somewhere. We have our own herd of bulls, we grow the feed for the herd, we have a feedlot, a slaughterhouse with a butchery, three butcher shops around the city, a big HoReCa department and, for a year already, the restaurant.
What sets you apart from other restaurant in a highly competitive city?
The product. We have pretty much zero marketing resources, we are tiny – most restaurants with this set of characteristics would barely be a blip on the radar. Almaty is, indeed, a very competitive city in terms of gastronomy, and you have to run very, very fast to stay afloat, make profit, and make sure your customers stay with you. The competition is cutthroat.
I strongly believe that to build a unique product offering, a chef has to use as much local produce as possible. In Almaty, every steakhouse before us bought the same meat from the same suppliers, while we chose to rely on our own, local-grown meat. This is a risky concept, but that is what sets us apart from the competition.
You live to experiment in the kitchen and outside, i remember seeing you bury the meat- where do you get all these ideas and inspiration?
Lots of travel, lots of eating around the globe and closely watching the best chefs and restaurants in the industry. Going to work for other chefs, multiple times. Working with great product. Waking up at 5 AM to go to a local market while traveling. Seeing old people cook food the way their grandmas taught them to.
With every item on the menu, I do want to tell some story. I always say that I speak the universal language of food.
What are some of the challenges you face as a chef and restaurateur that we dont get to see on social media and how do you overcome them?
The restaurant business, especially in our part of the world, is always a high-risk, low-margin venture. We are not a part of a restaurant group, hence we don’t have access to a multimillion marketing resource or an option to end up with a negative balance. We have to fight to stay afloat – and to be sure that we have a top-notch product in a very competitive industry.
More and more young people choose not to be a chef, so the entire industry is struggling: there are much less line cooks than we need. I am happy to say that we do not feel that problem as much as many other restaurants – once people arrive to work with us, they stay for a long time, and mostly leave either because they are moving to a different city or country, or opening their own.
For me, the personal struggle is the hardest. I don’t have an option of not going to work or taking a sabbatical – I have to always be there, if not physically, and the job does not have boundaries really. I can be in the process of rolling out a new menu, handling bloggers or people from the ratings, planning our strategic marketing and conceiving an investment plan while looking out for investors – all at the same time. It is pretty exhausting. I recently got divorced after being married for 18 years, and the restaurant was pretty much the main reason behind it.
Money is an issue. You know how no one ever talks about money, speaking only of success and future plans? Everyone wants their business and life to look like a spotless Instagram picture. It’s definitely not like that for many restaurateurs, including myself. We pay salaries and bills, and we get to pay ourselves, the managing team, the last. The inflation in Kazakhstan is enormous, and every time that products and services get more expensive, it chips away our bottom line. It’s scary because I think about the future of the restaurant and our people all the time, and sometimes I can lay in bed for hours, not being able to sleep.
I used to think getting in the ratings is a pinnacle, a penultimate point where you Finally Succeed And Everyone Knows You Are Cool. We are currently in the top 20 restaurants in Kazakhstan according to Wheretoeat, a local restaurant award, every rating and every dining guide writes about us, Kazmyaso Platforma has been featured in Conde Nast Traveller Italy among 4 restaurants worth visiting in Almaty. I have not been able to sleep well for about half a year because of that. It adds a lot of pressure. All eyes are on you and you cannot afford to be lazy, to not push out impeccable product, to not follow the trends. I know many chefs who struggle with that, too – we have ambition and we want to stay on top, but this is actually much harder than getting there.
However, I am very happy and content with where I am. I believe I can change the world by means of food and I think I am moving in that direction.
You have an amazing team that seems to be very knowledgeable and always greeting clients with a smile? What’s the secret behind it?
I believe in hiring highly skilled employees, paying decent wages on time – and trusting people. The team has a very high degree of autonomy, unlike in many restaurants where they have to bend to very strict rules. The kitchen is an army, and, while I do not believe in anarchy in the kitchen (anarchy is bad for business!), I do believe that if you work with professionals, you trust their best judgment. I used to work for big corporations before coming to work in the kitchen, and in a corporate environment there is mostly no room for being yourself, while in this restaurant, there is. This motivates people working with us, this sense of decency and self-worth that we try to give them.
Also, caring for people working for you is very important. Their everyday comfort is important. We have a very effective onboarding system where the person gets to know the rules before they even arrive in the kitchen. I try to make sure they have all the equipment and small things they need for their everyday work, tasty meals, good atmosphere in the kitchen, et cetera, et cetera.
I feel like this is the only way to have a full set of cooks in the industry where the demand for employees is much higher than the actual number of cooks in the market.
There is also a very positive side effect I have noticed. They are, indeed, a very strong team and they will not tolerate anyone not skilled enough, lazy or not working to their standards. They also developed a kind of corporate culture with their own memes, jokes, set of WhatsApp stickers and fun activities like buying each other the stupidest phone case they could find or wearing pins and badges they like. They are also incredibly tolerant and supportive of each other. They are a very sturdy bunch and I love them to pieces.
What dishes are your bestsellers and what should everyone try at least once?
The burger. People say it is the best in the city. Our charcuterie is also top-notch – we make all of it in-house, and we utilize all kinds of meat like horse, duck, goat, lamb and camel. The camel is a recent addition – I am expecting to have camel jamon later this year.
KazMyaso is also known for specials -how do you come up with special menus? Is this a monthly/regular addition to the menu?
Our specials are a very important part of my strategic marketing plan. Apart from the usual suspects like New Year, Valentine’s Day, Nauryz, etc. there are things that simply need to be put on a menu as a concept that no one in the region has done before. This is how we got our Vaca Vieja on a menu, for example.
Usually, you use bulls for feeding and slaughtering – in Kazakhstan, there is a notion that cow’s meat is inferior to that of a steer. But what if that cow had impeccable genetics, has been grazing on our Alpine-like meadows for 5 to 10 years, then was fed a high-carb diet for half a year? Vaca vieja means “old cow” in Spanish, and the tradition of slaughtering mature animals is present pretty much everywhere in Europe, but here, no one has ever heard of that. Mature animals would go to the market as inferior meat.
For our Vaca Vieja product, we used our breeding stock – cows that are behind our herd population. Every year or so, you have to reintroduce fresh breeding stock to the herd and remove animals that are too mature to give birth regularly. We fed them a proper grain-based diet and we aged the meat for longer periods, up to 60 days. I was afraid that people would not like it, but it became so popular that other chefs started calling our HoReCa department asking us to sell our Vaca Vieja to them.
What are your plans for KazMyaso?
We need to build a proper steakhouse, and I am working on it. I see The Restaurant as a modern, trendy steakhouse based on local product and our herd of Black Anguses, of course. It is much easier to find financing than a space suitable for a restaurant like this in Almaty. Lemmox Hastie of Firedoor, an amazing Australian steakhouse, searched for a space for 4 years, but I do not have 4 years. We are at our peak now and we have to act fast.
For more information, please visit https://kazmyaso.kz/ and folllow @kazmyaso.
