Managed his own art cafe “In the Forest” remotely from Dubai

September 2022 - August 2024
My side project cafe

How “In the Forest” was born

In 2022, I took someone else’s “Congelato” - a neat display case, a cleaned frame, the smell of waffle cones - and renamed it the art cafe “In the Forest”.

Not for the sake of a sign: I wanted to grow a place where people say hello and know each other by name, where espresso sounds like a short jazz set, and steam from the pasta rises like warm fog from a field.

Homemade and Italian cuisine, children's "Mafia", adult arguments about football, artists at the window with easels and a silence that can be heard - such that it falls on your shoulder and remains.

Entrance group or simply the entrance to the cafe

Design by wire

I already lived in Dubai, and all this magic was done “by wire”. At night - Indesign or Figma, cracked with options, during the day - a Dubai printing house: thicker or thinner paper, matte or glossy laminate, font half a point higher, until the menu fits into your hand like a warm plate.

I printed samples, smelled the fresh paint, put them in a suitcase, flew to Moscow - and there, at the window of my desk, I leafed through it like a photo album: “we’ll leave this, this will come later.” Identity, fonts, menu, SMM, advertising - everything myself, because I wanted everything to breathe with the same rhythm.

Five and order

Team - five. Schedules, purchases, costs, reporting - laid out on shelves like spices in the kitchen. The cameras are my personal series without a subscription: you turn it on and it’s immediately “live.”

Dance of arms at the counter

One day, our barista and the cook staged a weapons dance - a pitcher against a chef's spatula, and they fought right in front of the amazed visitors of the cafe.

Administrator Olya and I, as dispatchers of long-distance flights, called both of us on speakerphone: “inhale - exhale - smoke break - in position!” And an hour later we were eating tiramisu and laughing as if nothing had happened.

Night chef and new regulations

Another time, our chef Igor decided to “celebrate a good day” after closing: he twirled his cool knives at the camera, showed us a hooligan trick and raged all night, and in the morning - coffee, apologies and new regulations for night shifts. Life is not sterile, but it is its own.

Lyokha, come back

The legend of the stand is Lyokha. A flat-earther at heart, a master of extraction on the surface. His espresso sounded drier and cleaner than my briefs: “Make it like Lyokha’s,” the guests whispered. Lyokha, if you’re reading, come back. The stand remembers your grip.

Table by the window

Favorite place is a table by the window. The laptop is open, there are quiet electronics in the headphones, chef Igor puts on a plate of “something very fresh”, and you understand: this is what was started for – not a “project”, but a warm point on the map where the light lingers longer than usual.

In the summer I flew from Dubai and again learned to sit, look and be - a simple science that is more expensive than all presentations.

The right decision, bitter aftertaste

I sold “In the Forest” in the summer of 2024. The decision was correct—it’s hard to live offline at a distance—but that same lump still formed in my throat.

You close the door behind you and hear the cups still clinking inside; and it seems that if you turn the key back, time will rewind half a section - but no.

The place where the light stays

The memory remains: how the artists placed their easels against the glass; how the children argued whether there was a commissar; how someone random, and then already one of their own, left a tip “for the mood.”

The whole family has breakfast in a cafe

American breakfast, but with sous vide chicken

I'm not making a point

I'm not making a point. Someday I’ll buy it back or build another one - with the same light by the window, with a menu read on the edge of the desert, with signs where the letters live like people.

Because for me it's not about coffee and pasta. This is about design as a way to warm up: font, paper, words, smell - everything is in one row, everything is about making a person feel a little better.

Thanks to those who were “In the Forest”

In the meantime, thanks to everyone who was “In the Woods.” For “just one more cappuccino and we’ll run away”, for “let’s do it next week”, for the silence in which you can hear your own little world growing. I'll be back for sure. Worlds in which they have invested their hearts know how to wait.

There will be a website for the art cafe “In the Forest” and logos and Instagram posts...