Yuriy GolovCommunity profile

After graduating from a maritime college and following a decision he had made, Yuri became a chef at one of the bars in St. Petersburg. However, his broad perspective and interest in haute cuisine demanded a wider scope, and in 2010, he joined the five-star Kempinski Moika 22 hotel. Working as a sous chef under Didier Rëbel and other foreign chefs, along with business trips and travels, sparked an increasing interest in Russian cuisine in Yuri, confirming a well-known truth: the more a person travels and explores the traditions of other lands, the better they understand their own country and its culture. In parallel with his work at the hotel, Yuri pursued higher education at the St. Petersburg Institute of Trade and Restaurant Business, which he completed in 2011. Yuri Golov completed internships at Kempinski hotels in Vilnius, Berlin, and Budapest, and also underwent training in Rimini with Chef Claudio di Bernardo, a lecturer at the Institut Paul Bocuse, a prestigious hospitality school, restaurant management school, and culinary arts school in Lyon. When preparing dishes, Yuri Golov focuses on the pure flavor of the ingredients, preferring to use the flavors of nature as the star ingredient – sea bass, whitefish, wild shrimp, venison, bear meat, and wild boar. The main ingredient in Yuri's dishes is presented in a delicate setting, revealing numerous facets of flavor.

A sixth-generation St. Petersburg native, Yuri Golov has been fascinated by history since childhood. His interest was largely fueled by the history of his own family: Yuri's great-grandfather was an officer in the Tsarist army and a member of the personal guard of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II. From a young age, Yuri was drawn to the romance of the open sea, and after graduating from the German humanities gymnasium "Petrishule," he chose to attend the Admiral Senavin Maritime Technical College, which he completed in 2007. It was there that his interest in gastronomy first began to develop. Yuri gained his first knowledge of the gastronomic culture of other countries during his internships. Already in his second year, he worked as a steward on a merchant ship, circumnavigating almost half the world in six months, visiting America and South Africa. It was during this period of his life that he realized that gastronomy would be his life's work, but at the same time, he understood that the galley kitchen was too small for him, and that long voyages made him homesick. "The romance of Jack Sparrow collided with reality, and after graduating from college, I decided to move ashore and abandon a career as a ship's cook," Yuri recounts. "I switched to domestic Russian routes, where I met my mentor, a German named Alex Orok. He taught me to view cooking not just as a profession, but as a way of life that requires complete immersion and absolute dedication."