The general manager of ETNA Phuket, a restaurant harnessing the energy of the open fire, Roman Novoselov is excited about the future of Phuket dining.
Six years since he left a position running Hong Kong’s former Greek seafood restaurant Estiatiorio Keia and Peruvian restaurant ICHU, Roman Novoselov is ever hungry to offer Asia a taste of proper dining. This time, he’s in Phuket on a new mission.
The Russian hospitality guru joined Phuket’s latest dining concept ETNA Phuket located in the central Bang Tao area, billed as “the island’s first culinary theatre”, in July. The nearly one-year-old restaurant is part of a project led to shake up Phuket’s restaurant culture and compete with the likes of Hong Kong and Dubai.
Having lived in both cities, Roman knows what makes a good restaurant great. “People are looking for a fine-dining standard of food in a very casual setting,” he shares. The identity of ETNA follows this union.
“My time working in Dubai was very different from Hong Kong and now Phuket. Asia is natural in terms of food and freedom [in the kitchen].” Happy to return to the continent, ETNA may be his most cultural project yet.
Roman joins an international management team and chefs and service staff employed locally from Phuket to show off the island’s potential for travelling gourmands. ETNA’s menu is one of cultural fusion, and so is the concept’s backstory.
“The story behind ETNA is this small girl who is travelling all over the world and sampling the world’s famous and great dishes from different countries, bringing recipes back here to create the menu.”
“I won’t say we are Italian, Mediterranean, or one cuisine, but with our open-fire grill and pizza oven we are able to serve a range of dishes from different destinations.”
The focus is on sharing plates, grilled meat and seafood, side dishes, dips, and salads, all of which are tempered with four elemental techniques: open-fire, fermentation, smoking, and charcoal-cooked.
Italian touches on the menu come in the form of the salmon crudo with oranges, straccietella salad, and bolognese, with Russian and Slavic dishes arriving with the borsch with smoked beef, beef stroganoff, salmon and red caviar flatbread, and borodinsky sourdough rye bread. French dish duck leg confit and Chinese honey chicken with bok choy are amongst a range of international dishes.
Whilst the menu is grand and international, vegetables forming all recipes are sourced locally from the south of Thailand, grounding the menu in a local and familiar space.
“We offer all-day dining at ETNA with dishes and service [emulating] a fine-dining restaurant but with a fine-casual atmosphere. We want people to be comfortable here.”
Service, Roman finds, is key to establishing ETNA as a transformer to uplift Phuket’s dining standards in line with destinations beyond the south Thailand.
“We are aiming to increase service standards across the board to compete with Phuket’s leading beach clubs, our main competitors, ingraining a mentality in our team that service is to go above and beyond.”
“Our team loves each other and trains hard to show how unique the restaurant is. You can feel this in the atmosphere and throughout the people. Great service is what can bring our restaurant and the dining scene to the same standard as Hong Kong’s dining scene.”
ETNA’s straddling between fine-dining and fine-casual allows the lake-side restaurant to inhabit new faces and identities. A unique dining programme is amplified almost every day of the week with events to match with food.
In midweek, Mystery Wednesdays pops up at ETNA with guests offered a choice between three mystery food boxes to enjoy if they meet a minimum spend for the day. A day after, Jazz Thursdays come with soothing tunes.
Friday is where half-price cocktails are sold from 8PM till late, before Bubble Saturdays offers complimentary champagne from 9PM to 10PM alongside thumping DJ tunes. Sundays end the five-day-long weekly celebrations with chef-led children’s cooking classes.
Can ETNA Phuket assist with the island’s goals to become a global culinary destination? Absolutely, argues Roman. “We have great potential here.” Roman and his team at ETNA are unabashedly optimistic about where Phuket will be in years to come.
Pay a trip to ETNA Phuket on your next island visit for a taste of fiery international cuisine.
