Eric back in Kiev from Odessa

After spending two years in exile in Odesa, Eric Aigner opens a new club in Kyiv.
The man largely credited with establishing Kyiv’s affordable and unpretentious restaurants and nightclubs in the 1990s has returned to the capital after more than a two-year hiatus in Odesa.
Eric Aigner is back with his trademark Ho Chi Minh beard and easygoing smile. And he brought with him a team of bartenders and servers from Odesa to open a nightclub on Aug. 24 at the Ultramarine entertainment complex.
Banking on the reputation he earned in his heyday for managing places with fun staffs and informal Western-style service, it’s no surprise why the club is called Friends of Eric. As the venue opened its doors on Ukraine’s 18th birthday, club-goers, consisting mostly of Aigner’s friends and acquaintances, were asked to write words of greeting on bricks as they were stacked diagonally using cement.
Located on the mezzanine floor of the complex, the club has an elongated lounge area of sofa chairs standing on plush red carpeting, and has an identical second floor accessible on both sides by spiraling chairs. According to Aigner, the joint is designed to imbue a relaxed atmosphere of conversation and down-to-earth fun.
The same goes for the service. Aigner said he brought a team of employees with him from Odesa because people there are more laid back and it’s not beneath them to talk to clients. “I don’t need bartenders twirling and tossing mixing glasses or bottles,” Aigner said. “The idea is to be happy. It’s very important to create an atmosphere where people could meet other people, tell jokes and converse.”
He says fun is what brought him back to Kyiv. He says the happy atmosphere is missing here. “I never thought my friends would say that they miss my clubs. This is an honor to come back and run a club they’d like to visit,” the 46-year German native said.
The timing of the club’s opening is questionable in an already saturated market and given the financial crisis, which might heat up again in autumn. “I don’t need rich people coming here,” Aigner said. “I’m not afraid of the crisis, we have reasonable prices; it’s very important to have middle class level people.”
Not everyone is glad to see Aigner in Kyiv again. Former partner Ken Carter of New Zealand said Aigner defrauded him of $42,500. Carter filed civil charges last year and has subsequently won a court decision in May 2008 ordering Aigner to pay him that amount.
“I want justice, I want to stop Eric’s dishonest ways and to put him behind bars,” Carter said. “He’s a criminal.”
Aigner has called the ordeal with Carter a “farce” and said Carter ran their businesses, Tapas Bar and Blues Bar, into the ground. “He [Carter] wanted to be the director. I said we’re partners.”
The restaurateur has had tumultuous histories with former partners, dating to his first partner Ihor Pazepa, with whom he opened his two first bars in 1996. They had a falling out in 2000 stemming from a dispute revolving around their bar, Al Capone in the Podil district.
Pozepa said he locked Aigner out of the club after a series of disputes over money and personal matters.
In an archived interview with Kyiv Post, Aigner contended that Pozepa had been increasingly reluctant to pay him his part of the profits. Both sides went their separate ways after that.
“I don’t believe in contracts,” Aigner said back then in a Kyiv Post article. “Here, they mean nothing. They are just something to flush down the toilet.”
Soon thereafter, Aigner hooked up with his most longstanding partners to expand the Eric’s Family chain of restaurants and clubs which eventually numbered up to 18 different ventures. The chain has been renamed to Love and Hunger (Lyubov i Golod, www.skukakaput.com.ua). Many of its restaurants have come and gone but others still are running: Art Cafe 44, Bierstube, The Cave, Shnitzel Haus and others.
Partners Vladyslav Maksimov, Oleksandr Trush and Vitaliy Dubenko publicly divorced Aigner late in 2006 in an effort to change the brand’s image and attract new clients. According to news reports, Dubenko said Aigner couldn’t fulfill his responsibility as Eric’s Family’s manager, which lead to losses of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
This is when Aigner launched the New Eric’s Family brand, which also sputtered culminating with disagreements with Carter. Other former friends and clients of Aigner’s said he had borrowed money from them to open new restaurants in Kyiv, only to see them flop. He admitted he borrowed money from friends and said he will pay back as soon as he can. “This is what friends are for,” he said.
Odesa was next on Aigner’s list where he spent over two years on various ventures. There he wrote a book called Mein Quest (available at www.predmet.com) about his life in the former Soviet Union dating to his business travels to Russia in the early 1990s, and printed two thousand copies in Ukrainian.
He also ran Oreshek (The Little Nut) for six months modeled after a bar in Kyiv called Orekh (The Nut). He soon had a dispute with his partner’s wife who he said came back from a Kyiv business seminar and thought “she was the sole director of the place.”
It was during this time that Aigner launched the Tango & Eric Party Service in Odesa, an event and catering company, which – again – faltered once the financial crisis hit in full swing and orders plunged rendering the venture unprofitable.
Aigner said Ultramarine’s owners are his partners in his newest endeavor. He said he does everything from managing the club to being its creative director. “They’ve given me complete freedom,” he said.
“All I want once a person leaves my club is for them to feel completely relaxed, filled with positive " Aigner Said.