Fermentology is often associated with making various beverages. You need the wort, mosto or similar with yeast to start fermentation, which then leads to numerous alcoholic beverages or bases for distilled spirits. Few think of fermentology when it comes to probiotic sodas. But in Auckland’s Commercial Bay, Egor Petrov does just that at Ahi Restaurant. Sarah Mitchell sat down to hear about how he got into the industry, created New Zealand brand Bayside Rum, and has now branded himself as a Fermentologist.
Sarah: How did you end up in hospitality?
Egor: So I ended up in hospitality at first for a summer job. It was at a restaurant in Parnell in Auckland. The owners were Russian and my mom knew them. And so I got the summer job. It was an experience. It was my first paid job ever. And then I went back to study and did nothing for a few years. And after that, I was like, I'm done with study. I've got to go work.
The first job I got was in a bar. I walked into a gastro pub in Albany. Cause I worked as a waiter at that restaurant, I was like, oh, here's my CV. I'm applying for a waiter job. And the GM looked at it and he was like, “Do you want to be on the bar?” And I'm like, “Okay.” And that was that. I ended up on the bar and it was super deep. I thought you had to study to be on the bar.
On my first night, so clueless, I remember in the middle of the night I came up to the bartender next to me. It was like four deep, super busy. Busiest night of the week for them. And I come up to him and I'm like, “Hey mate, what's a JD and coke?” And he's like, “Oh for fuck's sake!” He didn't even answer me. I looked at the bottles and I'm like, Jack Daniels. Yeah, it works.
Sarah: Look how far you've come.
Egor: I know. I didn't even know. I swear to God. And then at that same job, once I got confident, I just remember a day when I was standing behind the bar before it got super busy on another busy night and I was like, people are here to have a good time, to relax, everyone's smiling. The staff are here to work hard, but also to have a good time. I feel good here. I feel like I can do this, and yeah, that's when I decided to do hospo.
Sarah: Then what's your current role or how did you get into your current role?
Egor: Oh God, my current role is I've decided to call myself the Fermentologist at Ahi. Because I work at the Ahi Restaurant in Commercial Bay in Auckland and it's a one man band.
I'm one of the three people that manages the bar. I can do that stuff with my eyes closed now. So I'm giving myself an interesting project, fermentology, which is to create the probiotic sodas with wild bacteria that grow on the plants that I get from the garden. It's been received super well and it's part of the menu now and becoming part of the concept. One of the owners is actually thinking of where could this go next.
I've met with Cameron Douglas, who's the only master of wine in New Zealand. I wanted to validate them, the wild sodas to myself and to the wider public. And I thought, how do I do that? And then I was like there's nobody better to, give me an honest opinion on whether these are any good then the master of wine of New Zealand.
So I got in touch, and surprisingly, he was really keen to try them. And he really enjoyed them. so yeah, that was really positive.
Sarah: And what are the current flavours that you've got of the sodas?
Egor: We're serving a lemon verbena, with fennel flowers as well, cause they grow wild.
At the garden, I did an apple mint, a flowering basil, and then what else did I do? The one that actually was a big hit with everyone, including the staff and the owners, while they were filming the second season of a TV show called The Restaurant That Makes Mistakes. They had a VIP night where all of the restaurant reviewers came in and had lunch, during the filming of the TV show.
The welcome drink was this wild soda that I did. It's a field blend as I called it, because we receive a bunch of different herbs. I decided to not separate them into different flavours, but to actually mix them together and I called it a field blend. I made a tea out of amaranth flower and it's like this beautiful, deep purple-ish pink colour to it. It's almost like a red wine, but it's non-alcoholic, it's probiotic and it's got these crazy cool herbal flavours to it. So, there's apple marigold, apple mint, basil, tarragon, lemon balm, and lemon Rubina. What I really enjoy is that through fermentation, all of those flavours come together really well, it just balances everything out. The lactobacteria in the ferment give it acidity. So, it's got all of the characteristics over natural wine, for example, but then it doesn't have the alcohol.
Sarah: Do you think you got into this because you stopped drinking?
Egor: I got into it back when I was still in Dubai, cause I had nothing to do during the lockdown. I started fermenting kombucha and ginger beer.
I really enjoyed the process of just experimenting with flavours rather than achieving a good result. Tasted like trash at that point. And then when I joined this company, I got all of these herbs, and time and space to do it properly. I upcycled the Antipodes bottles cause they're made for gas anyway, so I can bottle carbonate in them.
Sarah: Do you have an after work ritual to wind down after a shift?
Egor: Yes, I have a Shakti mat.
Sarah: Does it work?
Egor: Oh my god, it's the best thing I've ever done.
Sarah: Really?
Egor: I fall asleep on it. I'll come home, I'll have my vinegar water and cayenne pepper shot, because everybody's sick and I don't want to be sick. And ever since I've started drinking cayenne pepper, I haven't been sick. For about a year, almost. I haven't been sick because of antibacterial foods, which we don't consume enough of, like onion, garlic, ginger. Chili is not good for your stomach lining, but the cayenne is actually safe, so that's why I choose that one. I'll have that, and then I just go on my Shakti mats and bed and fall asleep.
Sarah: How times have changed Igor.
Egor: Takes a massive toll. If you add bad sleep, bad diet, no exercise and drinking on top of that, you're just not helping yourself. And I've learned that I need to help myself.
Sarah: When you get to a certain age where it starts to feel like you're just doing yourself a disservice by not helping yourself.
Egor: Like I said, before 25, you're a bit bulletproof and hangovers are, I don't know, whatever. But after 30, you're like, oh shit, I don't want to feel like that ever again. That's how I stopped drinking. I was down to only drinking once a week, because I got caught driving under influence. That taught me a great lesson. It was something that probably needed to happen to me.
I decided that I am not invincible, and I need to really pay attention to my drinking. So I started really slowing down, to the point where I was only drinking on Sundays, and it was like half percent beers. Then in November my friend had his stag do and I was like, all right, tonight we're going to have a drink because he likes drinking beer, whatever, one night. And then I woke up the next day with this horrendous hangover, not even the worst that I've ever had, but I was crying and I felt so shit I called the mental health line.
I'm like, I need some help. Yeah, they're like, just make a, make an appointment with your GP. And I'm like, oh, great. Thanks. what if I drive off a bridge right now? They said go talk to a GP and I'm like no one's going to help me. So I guess I have to help myself. And I thought, I never want to feel like this again, and that's when I stopped drinking.
Sarah: That's good that you can recognize that though.
Egor: Throughout my, 14 years in hospitality, I've seen a few too many people die because of drinking.
Sarah: What is the best lesson you've been taught or some of the best words of wisdom you've been given?
Egor: You know what? One of the best things I've ever been told was by Michael King who was a GM at Agents and Merchants in Racket when I first started there. They had this little laneway bar that had a coffee machine. So if you worked in the laneway bar, then you'd be making the coffee for the night. And I remember the waitress from the lane came and she was like, “do you know how to make coffee?”
Michael was standing there, looked at her and he was like, “of course he knows how to make coffee. He's a professional.” And I was like, “yes, I am.” I didn't really know how to make good coffee at that point, but I thought, holy shit, I'm going to do everything.
And it's because he said that you should be so versatile and, you shouldn't just stop at one thing. You should try and learn everything you can and become a professional because it opens up new doors. And new opportunities and you learn new skills and you may realize that you've been working on the floor as a waiter and you're good at it. But then you start learning about wine and you never know where that's going to take you.
Sarah: You probably never know if you're gonna be really into something unless you try.
Egor: Yeah, for sure. There is the opportunity to learn these things, so just go and learn them.
Sarah: What is one thing you wish you knew before starting your own business?
Egor: I wish I knew all of the things before I started my own business. If I could go back to 2020 and do it all over again, for example, I would do something to rival, say, Aperol. I would want to do it in London. but I wouldn't basically make my own spirit because it's so expensive.
You have to have major volume to get the costs down. But if you can buy all of the components and bring them together into something unique, then that's a lot more cost effective. I would have done something like an aperitivo. I think an aperitivo would be the way to go and then you don't try and make a bunch and then be stuck with it, trying to sell it. I wish someone told me, make sure people actually want this thing you're doing before you do.
Sarah: What's the most in the weeds you've ever been as a bartender?
Egor: As a bartender, it would have been, the New Zealand Rugby World Cup, I think it was 2011 when New Zealand won and it was just relentless. They didn't stop drinking and ordering. We were at the Nathan Club, which was a makeshift bar with trestle tables and buckets of ice. And it was so bad. And for six to eight hours straight, they were just... It was really bad. I often made a point to not drink any sugary sodas or Red Bull. And on that night I remember pouring, I don't know, bourbon and coke or something. There was still half a can of Coke there because I'm like, I need some fucking sugar. I don't want to repeat that ever again.
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