Ukrainian model, 21, drops out of NTU to help parents save restaurant from bankruptcy
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Vadim Zoubovski and his son, Mark
‘Ang moh’ dumplings
Mark’s parents, Vadim and Alena, opened Slavic eatery Kapitan in 2020 with their life savings. Before a nautical-themed rebrand and facelift in April this year, it was popularly known as Dumplings.ru.
Vadim specialises in serving pelmeni and vareniki, Slavic-style boiled dumplings that he humourously localises as “ang moh dumplings”. (This writer has patronised his restaurant as an anonymous customer since it was Dumplings.ru, and found the food there very good and homely.)
Pelmeni and vareniki have much thicker, doughy skin than silky Chinese dumplings (like wontons). The Russian pelmeni is typically stuffed with a variety of meat fillings like beef, pork, salmon and mutton, while Ukrainian-style vareniki has veggie options like mushroom, sauerkraut and curd cheese.
Vadim offers a Combo Platter ($17.90 for eight pieces) for both dumpling types for customers to sample more flavours.
His business began as a food kiosk in Tanjong Pagar MRT station before it moved to a restaurant space at nearby Maxwell Chambers. The couple also opened a hawker stall at Lau Pa Sat and a central kitchen in City Gate mall, which they have since closed.Sales have been sluggish at Kapitan. When 8days.sg asks Vadim if it’s a recent occurence, the 52-year-old looks wounded. “It has been a whole year of having almost no customers!” he laments.
Some days were so quiet, he only served one table for the entire dinner service. “We must ensure that the restaurant is at least 50 to 70 per cent full all the time to not lose money,” he points out.
Vadim's nautical-themed restaurant was inspired by his former career as a sailor
War affected business
Early last year, Vadim enjoyed a brief surge in business. Singaporeans had shown up to support his restaurant, when he was hit by hate speech online for running a Russian eatery amidst the worsening Russia-Ukraine war.
It’s also part of the reason why he decided to rebrand his Dumplings.ru restaurant to include a wider range of Eastern European cuisines. “Since the war started, we don’t feel comfortable promoting Russian food,” says Ukraine-born Vadim, whose extended family is based in Kyiv.
A former sailor, he had gotten Russian citizenship by chance after the Soviet Union dissolved while he was out at sea. When he returned to land, Vadim was assigned a Russian passport, though his wife and two children, including Mark, hold Ukrainian citizenship.
The Zoubovskis, who are now Singapore PRs, have been living here for almost 20 years after Vadim’s job as an oil tanker chief officer brought him here. He later opened a restaurant to introduce his childhood food to Singaporeans. “It’s potential income, but that’s not guaranteed,” he notes.
According to Mark, the mannequin at the door serves as "free marketing" for the restaurant as passers-by take photos with it
Introducing Slavic food to Singaporeans
It’s an ongoing struggle for Vadim to attract a consistent stream of local customers to his restaurant. “We noticed a drop in customers after the war started, but it’s a combination of factors. A lot of first-timers pass through here, but they don’t come here every day. Some of them say, ‘The food is not to my taste’, which is fair enough,” Vadim reflects.
Slavic food is traditionally heavier than Asian dishes and uses more dairy-based ingredients (lactose intolerance is believed to be more common in Asian populations). Which could explain why it’s not as popular with the local crowd as, say, wonton mee.
Vadim also points out that the relatively uncommon Slavic cuisine is not a “popular” type of imported Western cuisine in Singapore like Mexican and Italian food, which were brought in decades earlier and are now ubiquitous and familiar here.
On why he is holding on
It appears that keeping his restaurant open is a matter of principle for this former seafarer. On whether he had considered closing to cut his losses short, Vadim pauses for several long seconds to compose himself.
Choking up, he replies: “Of course, of course. But I never wanted to give up. It’s a good restaurant, so what’s the point of closing? Every business has its ups and downs. We still have hands, we still can cook, so we’re going to struggle till the last moment and explore every possibility.”
He had tried ways to promote his business, like running social media ads and offering one-for-one promotions, as well as opening a now-defunct Lau Pa Sat hawker stall selling handmade dumplings and soup.
“But all that didn’t work. This is very specific food, not for mass consumption. And hawker food must be cheap, but our dumplings are made from scratch, so we can’t sell it very cheap,” he says.
Next, Vadim is planning to open a kiosk selling dumplings in takeaway cartons. “It's like [fried rice chain] Wok Hey. In Russia they have the same kiosks for dumplings,” he says.
$55,000 a month to run the restaurant
It costs the Zoubovskis around $55,000 a month to run their restaurant. Mark breaks down the costs in a now-viral TikTok video, explaining that rent and utilities cost S$14,000, while salaries for four full-time staff is $15,000. Another $18,000 goes to inventory like raw ingredients, while business loan repayments and miscellaneous expenses take up another $8,000.
To put it in context, Mark could have gotten an NTU degree for around the same amount of money needed monthly to finance his family’s restaurant. He had chosen a maritime business degree as he was inspired by his dad, who still holds a full-time job in the shipping industry.
Kapitan now runs on a "skeleton crew" with just one full-time chef, compared to the past when Vadim hired as many as 14 employees. To further save costs on hiring manpower, Mark and his sister, who is in Secondary 4, both help out at the restaurant.
He recalls: “I left university a week before I was supposed to start. I realised I was too tied up at the restaurant. There was no way I could leave, ’cos we would have to hire a full-time manager and that’s expensive. As family, we can just work for free.”
Growing up fast
After discussing with his dad, Mark, who did his ‘A’ levels at Meridian Junior College, decided to put his studies on hold. It meant that he would lose his spot at NTU.
“I asked if the school could reserve my spot, but they had already held it for two years while I was serving NS,” says Mark, who was a transport operator in the army. “If I want to go back I’ll have to reapply, but I may not get a spot.”
He currently draws a monthly “minimal salary” of $1,000 from his parents to cover his transport and expenses. “I don’t go out to party anyway. Now that the restaurant is in the red, I take as little as possible. We want to save up and expand the business,” he says.
Mark reflects that having restaurateur parents meant that he and his sister have to grow up faster than their peers. “My sister is in Sec 4 doing her ‘N’ levels this year. She still comes down to help sometimes, but we have asked her to focus on her studies. Our parents are not home most of the time ’cos they’re at the restaurant, so my sister has to mature up and take care of herself. It’s the same for me,” Mark shares.
“Our bank account is going down, down, down”
He had also seen his parents gradually cutting down on their lifestyle to finance their restaurant. Bankruptcy is a concern, as his parents had taken out business loans to open their restaurant.
“Our bank account is going down, down, down,” says Mark. “We have already changed our car to a basic one for picking up goods, and my dad sold his motorbike. He really loves his motorbike. But I hope in the future, if it all goes well, I can buy another one for him. We just pray.”
Being from the TikTok generation, he now also markets Kapitan on the platform by making eye-catching videos like filming himself cooking a new menu dish.
He says: “I treat this as my own business, and there is still much learning to do. I do have plans for future expansion, like starting our own line of vodka drinks, reopening the restaurant for events and opening more outlets.”
What to try
Vadim and Alena have whittled down their menu, but at over 70 items it’s still a vast one. There’s a tasty, value-for-money 3-Course Set Lunch ($17.90) on weekdays from 11.30am to 3pm, which gets you a main course of pasta with five dumplings, a soup (chicken broth or Georgian rice soup), and kompot, a popular Slavic fruit punch made from berries.
Dumpling Ragout, $24.90 (8 Days Pick!)
This plate makes for a pretty filling lunch by itself, with grilled veggies and five different flavours of carb-loaded pelmeni with colour-coded skin. They are stuffed with robust, herb-infused fillings like juicy beef, pork, salmon and lamb.
These dumplings are strong-tasting for Asian palates used to more delicate fare, but all very good wrapped in chewy skin sprinkled with punchy fragrant dill, a refreshing change from Chinese-style soy sauce and sesame oil seasoning for dumplings.
Draniki, $24.90
While most Singaporeans’s idea of shredded potato pancake is the plate-shaped Swiss rösti, draniki is the smaller-sized Belarus equivalent (many European countries, in fact, have their own version).
Kapitan’s draniki is topped with smoked salmon rosettes, onions and rocket leaves with a side of sour cream. It’s a safely crowd-pleasing combination, if you are not up for the meat-heavy Slavic dishes here.
Ukrainian Borscht, $14.90
This vividly pink-red soup gets its colour from beetroots. Its piquancy, thickened with a dollop of sour cream, whets our appetite for more. It’s loaded with minced pork, cabbage, potatoes and herbs, which makes for a very comforting, nourishing bowl of soup with warm bread.
Okróshka, $14.90
While it is also a soup, the light Russian-style okroshka is very different from the Ukrainian borscht. Usually enjoyed in the summer, it’s served cold with diced raw vegetables like crunchy cucumbers, and plenty of dill. Our okróshka came with bits of cheese curd, which makes this rather jelak halfway through. While we rather enjoy it, we can foresee older Singaporeans who are used to boiling hot soups wondering how to consume this. Give this a try, though. It’s a good perk-me-up on a hot day.
Medovik, $12.90 (8 Days Pick!)
Asians have lapis legit, and in Ukraine and Russia, they have medovik, a sweet, caramelly layered honey cake that is just as notoriously time-consuming to make. Kapitan’s medovik is made by Mark and his mum Alena, who patiently alternate layers of velvety smetana (Russian-style sour cream) and crumbly honey-infused biscuits to make this decadent dessert that caps off a hearty meal nicely.
Kapitan is 32 Maxwell Rd, #01-05 Maxwell Chambers, S069115. Tel: 8875-7033. Open daily 11.30am-3pm, 5.30pm-11pm. https://order.angmohdumplings.com
Photos: Dillon Tan
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