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Putin’s Chef Cooking Up Trouble for Russia
Will Yevgeny Prigozhin become Russia’s next leader or next mysteriously dead Putin ally?
Yevgeny Prigozhin is no simple Russian. An entrepreneur from St. Petersburg whose first-in-Russia catering company quickly positioned him as a favorite among Russia’s rising elite, the “good-mannered but abrasive cook” may now be poised to become Russia’s next authoritarian leader — or corpse.
Time will tell.
From nowhere to somewhere
I briefly met Prigozhin in 1998. It was backstage at a Pet Shop Boys concert. My new company, Brooklyn Bridge Catering, came in with a lower bid and beat out his company, Concord Catering.
The job for my raw teams was to feed the band members and the stars, Chris Lowe and Neil Tenant.
Getting the Pet Shop Boys contract was a big deal back then. Russia was no longer the Soviet Union and, for the most part, it was a poor country. Having a band with such renown come to the city, was a huge event. Being involved in the concert was even bigger. I won the contract because I had very little overhead.
Concord Catering, Inc., was a real catering company with its own kitchen, professionally-trained chefs, a few trucks, trained servers…
