Mr Novikov controls over 50 restaurants in Moscow but doesn’t have an office. He started out with a loan of $50,000 from a Soviet cooperative after being turned down for a job at McDonalds. He now also owns supermarkets, cinemas and florists and is dubbed the “blini baron.” Aside from his 7,000-person empire, he owns the £26m Villa Fontanelle on Lake Como and is said to be especially partial to bread, black cherries and apricots.
Two stories to keep beside you
The blini baron triumphs
A review of Novikov’s Asian Restaurant I went to Novikov expecting something brash and “oligarch-tastic” having read articles that bigged up this recent Russian arrival at the heart of Mayfair as just such. As Wayne Rooney once said: “How wrong was I?” Novikov is owned by Arkady Novikov, a man who heads an […]
Leonard Blavatnik (Леонид Валентинович Блаватник)
Jewish father of four Leonard Blavatnik became the UK’s richest person in 2015 when The Sunday Times listed him to be worth £13.17 billion.
Readers have their say
2 comments
His restaurant in Berkeley Street, Mayfair is one of the best to have opened in 2012. I eat there all the time.
I love the bar at Novikov in W1 – it’s full to the brim of stunning ladies!!!!!!