Gülfairus: Fine Dining Inside Tselinny

The restaurant is named after Kazakh artist Gülfairus Ismailova, whose work moved between painting, theatre and scenography. Her husband, artist Evgeny Sidorkin, created the monumental sgraffito in Tselinny’s lobby — now an important piece of architectural heritage, carefully preserved during the building’s reconstruction.

Gülfairus is built on the idea of gastronomy as part of a wider cultural context — in dialogue with architecture and art, rather than simply placed beside them. The hardest part is not inventing something brilliant; it is preserving the clarity of the idea once it meets reality. The menu needs to be layered, but still coherent: local produce, seafood, Asian and Eastern notes — all brought together without excess, compromise or noise.

We placed the emphasis on seasonality and a pared-back style of presentation, which demands precision at every stage — from sourcing to the finished plate. This is not a one-time decision, but a daily discipline. Any adjustment immediately exposes the weak points: supply, consistency, kitchen discipline. Everything matters. And so far, it is all coming together exactly as it should.

We also thought carefully about the tempo of the restaurant — how time moves once a guest is inside. The experience is designed to unfold with ease: no abrupt shifts, no unnecessary pressure, no sense of overload. When the rhythm is right and every process is in place, the meal feels natural from start to finish — fluid, comfortable and quietly complete.

The philosophy of the kitchen is probably best expressed through four dishes:

• Beef tartare with pumpkin samsa — local beef in a classic tartare, set against pumpkin samsa as a national accent. Cold and hot, raw and baked, Europe and Central Asia in one sharp contrast.
• Potato and kazy ravioli in pepper sauce — Italian technique meeting a local ingredient. The potato carries the flavour and softens the intensity of the kazy, while the pepper sauce brings a classical note into a local context. The dish grew out of an idea for beef tartare, but we wanted something more accessible: not every guest chooses raw meat. With my background in working with horsemeat, we created a version with kazy — now one of the key dishes on the menu.
• Chebureki with crab, shrimp and romesco — a familiar shape, reimagined through the filling. It is not a direct reference, but a transformation of something everyone recognises.
• Black cod with sweet potato cream and spring garlic sauce — Asian flavours, modern technique, clean execution. A combination that works precisely because nothing feels excessive.

For a first introduction to the project, I would start here:

• Octopus carpaccio with Tashkent lemon sauce;
• Chebureki with crab, shrimp and romesco;
• Fried aubergine with smoked eel and stracciatella;
• Samsa with oxtail and tzatziki sauce.

Horsemeat has been reworked as an ingredient, giving it a lighter, more contemporary expression. We work with texture, temperature and acidity, allowing the flavour to become cleaner, lighter and more current. River fish was the harder ingredient to master. The issue was not taste, but inconsistency: fat, structure, season. It required more than a recipe; it required a system. That system is now in place.

The menu has to stay precise, not crowded. For me, the line between Central Asia and an author’s interpretation lives in taste memory: if a guest takes a bite and recognises the region before it is named, the balance has held. Kazakhstan comes through in the ingredients I choose to foreground. The rest — technique, form, presentation — is free to move.

White Rabbit Family gave me structure. It taught me that a kitchen cannot live on ideas alone; it has to be a system — standards, control, numbers. Without that discipline, gastronomy does not hold. What I would rather leave behind is the heaviness that appears when a dish tries to carry too much. Too many elements, too many ideas — and the flavour starts to blur. Now, I am more interested in leaving only what is necessary. Every element on the plate has to answer to the taste and the idea. Fewer components, greater precision. For me, the most minimal dishes reveal the chef most clearly: his control, his restraint, and his respect for the product.

The restaurant and the centre are meant to work in dialogue. We do plan to collaborate with artists and host events inside the restaurant, but with restraint and precision. Tselinny already carries a strong artistic charge; Gülfairus does not need to compete with it. The restaurant was conceived as something quieter and more distilled — a place where guests can move into a different kind of cultural experience, one shaped by flavour, atmosphere and detail. Any artistic interventions will be folded in gently, as part of the conversation with the centre, not as another loud layer.

Gülfairus is designed for guests who value nuance — people for whom flavour, context and precision carry equal weight. A place where cuisine, interiors and service come together as one precisely composed experience. The best way to understand the project is through an unhurried dinner: enough time to move naturally from the first impression to the final aftertaste, to settle into the atmosphere, and to feel how every detail begins to align into a single, coherent whole.

Images: restaurant websites and social media; Yandex Maps