Leonid Shutov

The Path

Ownership is the through-line in Leonid Shutov’s work: Bob Bob Ricard has been under his direction since 2008, and Bob Bob Cité since 2019. Read together, those roles mark a sustained approach to front-of-house identity in London, where the room is treated as part of the offer, not just the setting for it.

The Work Today

Long stewardship at Bob Bob Ricard has allowed a precise house style to settle in. The Soho room is built around theatrical hospitality: glamorous interiors, a strong sense of occasion, and the “Press for Champagne” buttons that make the service rhythm immediate and direct. Under Leonid Shutov, the restaurant’s mechanics are made visible on purpose, so the act of dining becomes the staging around it. Since 2019, Bob Bob Cité has extended that same ownership-led approach into the City of London. The significance is continuity rather than reinvention for its own sake: two addresses, both shaped by Shutov, both carrying a clear point of view about what a restaurant should signal the moment a guest walks in. In that sense, the work is less about novelty than about maintaining a recognisable standard of atmosphere, identity, and delivery. Shutov has described the aim plainly: “We are trying to offer people a great experience, something memorable.” That statement matches the visible choices attached to the houses he owns. The emphasis sits on the full encounter—room, gesture, and service working together—so that the memory of the visit is built as carefully as the meal itself.

Signature

Leonid Shutov is associated with the signature dish The "Press for Champagne" buttons.

In Their Words “We are trying to offer people a great experience, something memorable.”

Acclaim

The “Press for Champagne” buttons are the clearest expression of Bob Bob Ricard’s house style under Leonid Shutov. They turn service into a direct action, and in doing so they make the restaurant’s point of view legible at once: the experience is meant to be brisk, playful, and unmistakably set apart. The interiors carry equal weight. From 2008 onward, the Soho address used room design to establish identity, with glamour functioning as a practical tool of hospitality rather than a decorative extra. Bob Bob Cité, added in 2019, carried that same language into the City of London, extending the reach of the concept without diluting its clarity.