![Vladimir Mukhin in his WR Lab, his creative engine room.](/content/dam/images/g/v/5/q/e/c/image.related.afrWideArticleLead.940x529.gv5hir.png/1490577544889.jpg)
Vladimir Mukhin sounds a little puffed at the other end of the line. "I've just come from fencing," explains the chef and co-owner of the Moscow restaurant White Rabbit, who will be in Melbourne next week for the World's 50 Best Restaurants Awards.
My interest is whetted. Mukhin, epee in hand, shows off a few swashbuckling moves in Netflix's latest season of Chef's Table, which premiered last month. His swordplay contrasts with slow-panning shots of beautifully plated dishes and bucolic scenes of Russian countryside, but are not fully explained.
"I need it," says Mukhin, who fences at least twice during the week and on weekends. "It isn't just sport, it's a lifestyle."
Fencing, described as physical chess, not only gives him pleasure, it girds him for the demands of running White Rabbit, which have multiplied rabbit-like as its renown has spread.
![Scarlet Flower with apples, honey and black radish at White Rabbit.](/content/dam/images/g/v/5/q/e/i/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1490326349348.jpg)
In 18th spot on the World's 50 Best, White Rabbit is a place not simply to dine but to be lead down the proverbial rabbit hole – a la Alice in Wonderland – to a magical new realm of Russian cuisine.
The glass-domed restaurant, whimsically decorated with storybook bunnies, operates long hours (until 2am some nights), with a la carte and degustation dining on separate levels. In addition, there's the Gastrobar and Mukhin's creative engine room, WR Lab.
Most recently, he introduced a chef's table, which serves as a stage for visiting chefs. He's also thinking of reviving Kutuzovsky 5, a pop-up last year rebooting historical recipes, this time near Red Square.
"It's more than a restaurant," he says. "We are White Rabbit Family."
As well, Mukhin must contend with heading up a 100-seat restaurant squarely in the international culinary glare. Just four years after it launched in the Chinese year of the rabbit (hence the name), the restaurant jumped into the 2015 World's 50 Best at 23, winning the award for highest new entry.
![The glass-domed restaurant operates long hours, with a la carte and degustation dining on separate levels.](/content/dam/images/g/v/7/1/8/4/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1490568634844.jpg)
"It was so fast," he recalls. "So many people from every country coming to us."
With 70 per cent of diners from overseas and the dinner waitlist of month, Mukhin's inclusion in the third season of Chef's Table is likely only to intensify interest. Ditto should White Rabbit go higher at the World's 50 Best awards on April 5.
All this, though, is part of a greater ambition. Hailing from five generations of cooks, Mukhin is on a mission to export his modern brand of haute Russian food, founded on traditional recipes and ingredients, to the world.
It means breaking down nagging stereotypes, created over several decades of Soviet rule, of Russian food as simple and stodgy. Think borscht, piroshki, blinis, caviar and mayo.
![Chef Vladimir Mukhin is reinventing Russian cuisine.](/content/dam/images/g/v/5/q/e/y/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1490326698022.jpg)
In their place, Mukhin is creating dishes that capture the "real Russian taste", which he describes as "between sour and sweet … sometimes with a bitter spiciness".
White Rabbit's menu has included moose-lip dumplings, swan livers with fermented baked milk and Antonovka apple paste, sturgeon with sour corn and fried crucian sauce, a black bread dessert, and honey cake with sweet cherry and sour-cream ice-cream.
In the process, he hopes to build a new global food movement, like Scandinavian and Peruvian before it, ably supported by a new generation of Russian chefs, among them Anton Kovalkov, Sergey Berezutskyi, Dmitry Blinov and Anatoly Kazakov.
It's also a revolution that received an unlikely boost courtesy of President Vladimir Putin's 2014 embargo on imported goods, which pushed Russian producers to the fore.
![Black bread pudding features on the menu.](/content/dam/images/g/v/5/q/e/q/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1490326738140.jpg)
"Now is the time for a Russian new wave to re-energise and do something more," Mukhin says. "But it takes time to rebuild Russian cuisine."
It also means getting out of the kitchen, something he does at least twice a month. When we talk, he is just back from Mexico City, where he cooked with fellow top-50 besties Jorge Vallejo from 12th-placed Quintonil as part of the Mexican restaurant's fifth-birthday celebrations, and Rene Redzepi from Copenhagen's fifth-placed Noma.
At the start of March, he joined the likes of Massimo Bottura, Ana Ros and Rodolfo Guzman at a gastronomic festival in Sochi, on Russia's Black Sea. "It's part of being a global community," he says. "A chance to show Russian cooking."
With travel, he sees an all-important exchange of ideas, too. For example, he discerns a Russian flavour in a fermented cactus dish by Vallejo, who has visited White Rabbit three times. Likewise, in Mexico, he concocted a caviar-styled amuse-bouche from fish and Mexican ants' eggs.
Travel also enables Mukhin to explore Russia's vast, sometimes wild, territories to unearth ingredients, producers and recipes, the way Central chef Virgilio Martinez does in Peru. From Vladivostok last year, for instance, he brought back whelk, sea urchins and bilberry for a special tasting menu.
"White Rabbit is the lab of my ideas," he says. "We make it here then share it with the world."
Vladimir Down Under
He isn't sure yet what's on the menu when he hits Melbourne. Apart from the 50 Best awards, he's here for a Melbourne Food and Wine Festival masterclass and a collaborative dinner at Alla Wolf-Tasker's Lake House in the Victorian town of Daylesford on April 9. The chef of Moscow's White Rabbit is sure, though, it won't be one of his more curious dishes: moose lips.
"I will take my inspiration from Australian ingredients but with a Russian taste," he says.
It will be his first trip to Melbourne and Sydney, which he also plans to visit, but not Australia – he was a guest at last year's Margaret River Gourmet Escape. While here, Mukhin says he's keen to try restaurants in both cities – particularly new Italian, seafood and those cooking over fire or with "interesting concepts".
He is also hoping to catch up with local chefs like Peter Gilmore and Jock Zonfrillo and, with White Rabbit business partner Boris Zarkov, possibly see some contemporary art and opera.
Staying with the other World's 50 Best chefs at QT Melbourne, though, Mukhin will take more than memories away – there's a gift bag of quintessential Aussie goodies. And if named in the best 50, he'll be presented with a personally engraved Suisin Gyuto chef's knife, valued at $500, from QT's Japanese knife shop Tanto.
Having asked what he might cook in Oz, though, has him thinking. "Is it possible to find moose lips in Australia?" he jokes. "Maybe I try kangaroo lips." Or emu.
NEED TO KNOW
White Rabbit Smolensky Passage, Smolenskaya Square, 3, Moscow. Tel +7 495 782-62-62. For more see whiterabbitmoscow.ru/en/
AFR Contributor