A Siberian Slice of Pizza
Eric Shogren storms the food counter at MyMy, a cafeteria in downtown Moscow. He’s a big train wreck of a man: wild hair, half-tucked red polo shirt, blue blazer straining to contain his burly chest. Shogren reaches over the loaded trays of two tiny Russian women in line and starts criticizing the food. “Can you believe this?” he barks, stabbing an accusatory finger at the desiccated chicken and lamb entrees that sit baking under a heat lamp. “And look at the potatoes–and the cake!” the American businessman bellows. “It’s slop! Tasteless mediocrity!”The women in line seem astounded, as if some green alien had just abseiled from a trapdoor in the ceiling, ready for a snack. But Shogren, a hyperkinetic 39-year-old Minnesotan, isn’t eating at MyMy today. He has just stopped in to stir things up a little and to illustrate his contention that Russia doesn’t offer much in the way of first-rate fast food.
For the past decade Shogren has been striving to educate the Slavic palate nearly 2,000 miles east of here, in one of the last places on earth you’d expect to find an American entrepreneur: Novosibirsk, the capital of Siberia and Russia’s third-largest city. Shogren is the founder of New York Pizza, Siberia’s fastest-growing fast-food chain.
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