Penza, 10 February 2019. PenzaNews. The official opening of the restaurant Black Pepper located on the ground floor of the Azimut Hotel Penza in Prospekt Stroiteley Street took place on Saturday evening, February 9.

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It gathered a lot of guests who had booked tables in advance to become participants of the event. A show programme with contests, prizes and live music had been prepared for them.

At the beginning of the evening, the restaurant visitors could enjoy world hits in an unusual arrangement performed by cover band Smoky Ice. Then a special guest of the event – famous Russian singer and composer Andrey Aleksin appeared on stage.

Answering questions from the news agency PenzaNews, restaurateur Igor Shafran drew attention to the fact that the Black Pepper, which was part of ShafranGroup and located at the hotel, was focused not only on hotel guests.

"We are pleased to welcome all guests of our city. The peculiarity of any of our restaurant is that we approach the work open-heartedly, with knowledge and love. We love our work, we love what we do, and we always like to see happy faces of our guests," he said.

According to the interlocutor, the Black Pepper restaurant is designed for 100 seats, the dining area is about 250 square metres, and the kitchen is twice as large – about 500 square metres.

"When constructing the kitchen we took into account that all our restaurants are provided with some product supply and half-finished products," Igor Shafran explained adding that the open kitchen equipped in the building would be presented later.

He also said that together with the chef he intended to go on a gastronomic tour around Europe to enrich the menu of his restaurants with interesting dishes and learn new techniques of their preparation.

"We might gradually shift to seafood, [...] we will serve fine things at quite affordable prices," Igor Shafran shared his plans.
Speaking about the secrets of the success of restaurant business, he noted that there are "four golden rules" of ShafranGroup, which were followed by all restaurants of the network without exception.

"This is delicious cuisine, or, as I call it, a delicious patty, a high level of service and a comfortable environment. There is another golden rule, but I will not disclose it. Only our employees know it," the restaurateur said.