Maya

The story

Crafted with passion, served with love

A Restaurant Built Around Fire

Maya is inspired by what the restaurant itself calls "primeval culture" — open fire, charcoal, and smoking, the techniques our ancestors used long before modern kitchens existed. On Bolshaya Nikitskaya Street, one of Moscow's most storied avenues, this philosophy translates into a cooking style that draws on Peruvian and Spanish traditions while staying rooted in something older and more instinctive.

The Chef Behind the Concept

The kitchen is shaped by Australian chef Tom Halpin, who began his career in 2004 washing dishes at his mother's restaurant in Sydney. After working his way through the best kitchens in that city, he moved to Copenhagen in 2010 and spent four years at Noma — one of the most influential restaurants of the past two decades. From 2015 onward he traveled extensively, cooking across Central and Latin America, Europe, and Asia, absorbing culinary cultures along the way before arriving in Moscow to open Maya.

Day-to-day kitchen leadership sits with Vladimir Velichko, who has been with Maya since its first service and rose from line cook to head chef. The wine program, which earned Maya a Wine Spectator Best of Award of Excellence in 2025, is overseen by chef sommelier Dmitry Kipelkin — a veteran with formal training in Germany and Burgundy whose career includes a long tenure at the acclaimed Selfie restaurant.

The Team and the Group

Maya is part of Lucky Group, a Moscow hospitality company founded by Ivan Kukarskikh and Bogdan Panchenko, who now operate 22 restaurants united by what they describe as shared values and attention to detail. CEO Pavel Polyakov joined the group in 2020 and worked directly across the Maya project before taking the executive director role in 2022. Bar operations are handled by Andrey Lekomtsev, who brings 14 years of industry experience across several Lucky Group venues.

What to Expect

The menu spans food, a bar program, and a wine list substantial enough to earn international recognition. Weekend mornings open with breakfast service from 9:00, making Maya one of the few places in its category to run the full arc from a Saturday morning meal through a late Friday night. Private dining and wine pairing are available for those who want a more structured experience. The Peruvian and Spanish influences at the heart of the menu are filtered through fire — the kitchen's defining element and the thread that connects Tom Halpin's global travels to a single, coherent point of view.