Andrey Salnikov

Andrey Salnikov grew up in Yekaterinburg and came to cooking through an unexpected route. As a child he cooked out of necessity. He didn't plan to be a chef. He was training professionally in judo, was a member of the Sverdlovsk regional team, held a brown belt and the rank of Candidate Master of Sport. But a family move ended his sports career — and his mother suggested culinary college. He agreed reluctantly, then discovered he loved it.

At 15 he started studying, at 17 he had his first official job. The first restaurant was a vast two-floor space in Yekaterinburg with 2,000 seats and multiple cuisines — Asian, Italian, Russian. Andrey worked in the Asian section: teppanyaki, wok and sushi. He learned to fillet salmon, 200kg arriving every week — and that became his foundation.

Then came restaurant Kef, stints in Chelyabinsk, Novosibirsk, the Caucasus, and stints in Moscow and St. Petersburg. A key turning point: a letter to a restaurant in St. Petersburg led him to chef Arslan Berdiev — winner of the S. Pellegrino competition for Russia, CIS and the Baltics. Together they opened CIBO in Yekaterinburg, where Andrey became sous chef for the first time.

Along the way he built a parallel creative life: TV appearances, masterclasses, culinary shows, and an online school with courses in cooking fundamentals, breakfasts, healthy eating and knife skills — developed during the pandemic, which brought him 80,000 TikTok followers in a month.
In 2024, after 8 months in Almaty, he was invited by SunGroup and came to Tashkent. He is 36 years old. He climbs slowly, he says — but never stops.