The “Petrovich” club was created in 1997, when Igor Pisarsky, the head of the “R.I.M.” agency, and Alexey Sitnikov, president of the “IMAGE-Contact” Consulting Group, supported the creative idea of the well-known artist and psychiatrist Andrey Bilzho to open in Moscow a dining place based on a new concept.
Located in the basement of a XIX century building, which used to be a storehouse of a cognac-producing factory, in 1998 the “Petrovich” club was awarded “For the best communal interior” diploma of the Moscow “Interior and Design” Exhibition. The club concept was based on the image of the main character of Bilzho’s cartoons published in the “Kommersant,” while the concept of the interior was prompted by the ironic nostalgic feeling for the good old Soviet times, for our joint past. The interior is filled with familiar everyday objects of those times, mostly gifts of club members, and art objects created in the style of that unforgettable epoch. The food, well-known from our childhood, is served on plates decorated with Bilzho’s cartoons. The club boasts a very special atmosphere, home-like, cozy, impregnated with humor. “Petrovich” is a museum, a restaurant, and a home every customer is striving to return to.
Every Saturday is a day when a special item of the menu is offered at the “Petrovich” club – home-style dancing. The young and the old are dancing non-stop by the well-known tunes of Gloria Geynor, ABBA, Bony M, and sing along with the “Red Riding Hood” and “Bu-ra-ti-no” songs. People are dancing right among the tables, and, when everybody is up dancing, the tables are pushed aside the way it was at the parties in tiny private apartments of the Soviet era. The Saturday dancing is so popular with the customers that one has to book a table a week ahead.
“Petrovich” loves its guests, and it is not just a declaration written on every page of the menu but actions as well: available for the guests always are checks, draughts, dominoes, cards, “pyatnashki” and other table games, while the alcoholic drinks paid for but not finished by the guests can be reclaimed during one year. Any guest has the right to buy any item of the club collection, to order his/her bust (if three snapshots are provided), and to donate objects of his/her childhood and youth to the club so that he/she could come to look at them again free of charge.
“Petrovich” is not just a restaurant but a club and its basic events may, therefore, be attended by club members only. The regulars of the club are ad specialists, journalists, businessmen and politicians still preserving their sense of humor, PR people, political consultants, designers, humorists, famed TV hosts, and diplomats. The club is extremely popular among foreigners.
The club system is operating at “Petrovich” only in the evening (the club is open until 5 a.m.), while in the day time its doors are open to everybody who wishes to enjoy a tasty and rather inexpensive business-lunch. Every day from 9 p.m. “Petrovich” offers live music performances.
