Moscow rich go on diets and oxigen

[Buratino]

Wealthy class forgoes excess for health and style

MOSCOW After a decade of gorging on French food, fast cars and giant profits, Russia's rich are slowing down to smell the flowers - and the oxygen.

Streams of it, pumped through bottles of water perfumed with fruits and herbs, are the main menu item at Shizlong, a restaurant in central Moscow. Clusters of fashionable young people breathe it in through slim tubes stuck slightly up their noses. Ten minutes of breathing deeply reduces the need for sleep, according to the bar's bubbly manager.

The respiratory repast is a sign of the changing tastes of Moscow's super-rich. Russia's wealthy are reverting to simpler, skinnier lifestyles, in part a reaction to the excesses of the 1990s, with its meaty feasts and casino frolics. Now, 10 years into Russia's embrace of capitalism, the wild boar featured on the menus at Czar's Hunt, once the most popular restaurant among Moscow's elite, has given way to a new predilection for sushi bars, green tea and aerobics. "People know it's time to rest, eat healthy food and look beautiful," said Alexander Sokolov, the general director of Shizlong, or Chaise Longue. "To be tan without bags under your eyes."

The health kick has another catalyst: style.

"In Moscow, fashion means everything," said Sokolov, dressed in a suit and seated at a glass table equipped with an oxygen machine. "People like to be surrounded with others who look just like them. We are a fashionable place."

Shizlong's most popular dish is plain oatmeal. Other dishes include a plate of yellow fruit, steamed salmon and lamb. Upstairs, diners can luxuriate in seven tanning rooms, or enjoy a facial in a cream-colored beauty salon hung with caged canaries.

Sokolov, who revels in the exclusivity of his establishment, says that the average diner earns at least $120,000 a year, about 275 times the city average, though the food and the beauty services are relatively inexpensive by Moscow standards - $20 for a haircut, for example. On Friday night, the small parking lot was jammed with BMWs, a Ferrari and a Bentley.

The diners, who 10 years ago frequented raucous clubs, "now speak coldly to beginner fashion models, talk business with each other and take pleasure in low-calorie food," wrote the authoritative entertainment guide, Afisha, in a recent review of Shizlong, which, written half in Cyrillic and half in Latin letters, is the Russian approximation for a reclining chair.

The fad has brought some curious healers to the fore, like Anatoli Volkov, a doctor who has a booming business advising wealthy Muscovites on weight control. Volkov, who himself is a heavy smoker and consumes a steady diet of meat and potatoes, administers blood tests to his patients and uses the information to customize their diets.

But many argue that the desire to get fit runs deeper than fad diets. Fitness clubs, rare five years ago, now number 125 in Moscow. Planet Fitness, a Russian chain that opened in 1998, now has 15 clubs, two open around the clock.

Almost all cater to the wealthy. One chain of fitness clubs, World Class, set up shop in an elite dacha community, where membership costs a whopping $4,000 a year.

"There's been a shift in mentality and lifestyle," said Alyona Shishkina, marketing director for Planet Fitness. "Before it was all about style. Now people are really working out - taking responsibility for themselves, and not leaving that to Grandfather Lenin."

The discipline took some getting used to. Early clients were outraged to learn that smoking was prohibited in the health club, Shishkina recalled. Even worse, the club's small juice and salad bars offered not a single alcoholic beverage.

"Now it's 'Give me a low-calorie salad or tell me what I can eat in restaurants so I can stay in shape,'" Shishkina said. "People didn't think like that before."

The trend got a boost from Russia's trendsetter in chief, Vladimir Putin, who early this year commanded stocky bureaucrats, as well as ordinary Russians, to get in shape, after a disappointing show in the Olympics.

While Moscow's rich work off a decade of decadence, the rest of Russia is still barely earning a living. Life expectancy fell dramatically in the 1990s, in part because of rampant alcoholism. It is only now beginning to stabilize.

Back at Shizlong, an unusual pair of guests are taking hits of oxygen for about $2 each. Two giggling students, economics majors at Moscow State University, confess that the visit is their first. They paid with money saved from after-school jobs selling mobile phone contracts.

"Breathing it for 10 or 15 minutes will revive you," Sokolov said. "And you need less sleep and can dance more." He added that for some customers, Shizlong was a stopover between a late-night meal and Moscow dance clubs. The students, aged 19 and 20, aspire to be part of the wealthy class. For now, however, dressed in sweaters and rugby shirts, they stand out in the bar's glitz. Sokolov, however, did not seem to mind. "We have those who come in Ferraris, and those who come by subway," he said, shrugging. "I don't care about transport, just as long as they pay the bill."