Secrets of the Steppe V: Hospitality, glass-half-full

Photo: Eve Mayes with permission for the CLC

Year Abroad student Eve Mayes returns to her column on the weird and wonderful of Kazakhstan with her observations on the hospitality industry in Astana.

If I were, in this moment, to send you the Instagram pages of the restaurants, bars, café’s and even a ski ‘resort’ that I have been frequenting, you would think that I’d died and gone to a Las Vegas-style heaven. I’m not kidding. Every business here, no matter how small, has an intricately crafted social media presence that will convince you it’s the sort of place the Kardashians go on the weekend. That’s not to say my first couple of weeks back here have been disappointing – I’ve been paragliding, paraded through a restaurant to a professional chorus of ‘happy birthday’ and have even interviewed a renowned artist in his private studio (more on this in a second). I just want to make clear that the truth that “social media lies, kids” has never rung quite as true for me as it does in Kazakhstan – and it’s one of my favourite things about being here.

I’ll start with restaurant and bar culture here. Every one of these businesses has a carefully curated ‘vibe’ to their feed, however, almost all of these ‘vibes’ will include sparklers, cocktails, dim (but ornately fitted) lighting and people dancing. Weird for a restaurant, right? Wrong. The conclusion I’ve drawn from this is that no restaurant here is just a restaurant: from resto-bars to bar-and-grill’s to resto-karaoke-bars – everywhere does everything. The extreme climate (and, in Astana, the extreme distances between literally everything) means people tend to go to one place for the whole evening, or even until the early hours. This obviously encourages intense competition in the customer service industry, which explains the extremely impressive advertising.

Note: In a similar vein to this, every café and restaurant will serve almost every imaginable cuisine. From tteokbokki (stir fried cylindrical rice cake) to sushi to pizzas to borscht – you will never be short of choice (this doesn’t mean they do every cuisine well, unfortunately you often just have to guess and hope).

The adverts never lie. They’re just very, very good at framing the truth with the use of carefully planned camera angles. If they promise friendly staff, sparklers, and live music, you can rest assured the restaurant-bar-club-lounge will have them. The thing is, that table of guests you saw laughing, dining and dancing together in the advert? They are the only table of people there other than you. All of a sudden you feel like you’re living in the restaurant’s marketing programme. And I can confidently say it’s a pretty surreal experience to be witnessing a semi-famous Kazakh pop-star perform for about 12 people in a sushi restaurant.

The city is simply too big, with too few people for the vast number of hospitality venues to be full. In its desire to project a Westernised, developed image to the rest of the world, Astana has developed the supply before the people have had a chance to adopt any of the Western eating/drinking culture that would provide the demand. The one Kazakh industry that has entirely undeniably overtaken the UK is that of advertising. Every business (and person) here knows how to use Insta because, as my host mother kindly and promptly reminded me upon my return – in Astana “what you look like matters”.

This drawing back of the glittering façade of Kazakh social media, did not – and still does not – discourage me from visiting these places, interacting with the social life and the people behind the camera. And almost every time, you discover some unexpected joy that wasn’t on their profile. There’s something very charming about peeling back the Instagram feeds, uncovering the true personality of these places and this city: it’s not-quite westernised night life where dinner and karaoke are the same event.

 In fact, realising nothing is what it seems has led me on some incredible adventures. One in particular, which I believe warrants its own exploration in coming weeks, is my uncharacteristically bold decision reach out to Alpysbai Kazgulov – a famous contemporary Kazakh artist – through his Instagram. Of course, I discovered a lovely, normal and very friendly person - not the perpetually suit-wearing, huge-gallery-opening, intimidating TV-interview star that appeared on his feed. More on this next time, though. For now, I just want to leave you with a pithy summary of a new piece knowledge that this ever-fascinating country has taught me: ultimately, with the right camera angles, a uni room can look like a palace, three people having dinner can look like the party of the century and anyone can be a celebrity.

Last year, my language teacher described Astana to me as the Las Vegas of Kazakhstan and I must admit I never quite understood what she was getting at. Granted, it took some getting under the skin of the city but now – I think I finally do.