Novikov restaurant's Italian-inspired recipes for summer Widely acknowledged as Russia's answer to Terence Conran, Arkady Novikov is the country's most successful restaurateur: he owns more than 50 restaurants, and employs over 7,000 people. From the beers, blini and borscht of the budget chain Yolki-Palki, to the rustic Tuscan of Cantinetta Antinori in Moscow, the 18 different cuisines of his restaurants reflect Novikov's global travels. So it was no surprise when it was announced that his first London restaurant, Novikov, which opened in Mayfair last November, would have two dining-rooms - one serving a pan-Asian menu, the other an Italian one. Italian food is his favourite. I am a huge fan of their cuisine. My favourite food is Italian bread; I have it every day and can't live without it," Novikov, 49, says. I have a house in Italy [he spent a reported £26 million on Villa Fontanelle, the palazzo on Lake Como previously owned by Gianni Versace] and it is one of my favourite places in the world. Also, I am a businessman so I am not crazy enough to serve Russian cuisine. Novikov was very particular about the look of the restaurant. The interior of the Italian dining-room is designed to resemble a Sicilian terrace.Each table has pots of herbs and in front of the open kitchen sit olive baskets and copper bowls brimming with Sicilian peppers, Sorrento lemons and Calabrian broccoli. Ninety per cent of the food here comes from Italy. "I wanted to recreate the essence of Italy," Novikov says. The market kitchen epitomises the region's fresh produce. Novikov's Italian menu comprises mainly of Sardinian and Sicilian dishes. "It's very much a vision of the two islands," the head chef, Carmelo Carnevale, who is from Sicily, says. In Sardinia, where it is more mountainous, you have lamb, baby goat and suckling pig. He serves these dishes as a daily special roast. And in Sicily everything is based on fish. One dish that has proved popular is the sea bass in a rock-salt crust. The fish is encased in a kilogram of salt before being roasted. The crust, which keeps the fish moist, is broken open in front of you at the table. Although it looks an alarming amount of salt, "the sea bass absorbs just the amount of salt water it needs, because the skin of the fish is so hard," Carnevale says. Carnevale, 36, was introduced to restaurant kitchens as a five-year-old boy. My uncle was the general manager of a hotel in Syracuse, my home town, and he took me into the kitchen. I watched this very old-style chef with a big hat and moustache, and I thought, this is what I would like to do. By the age of 13 he was washing plates in a restaurant, and at weekends his grandmother taught him how to cook. We used to make bread in the wood oven - focaccia and pizza. She taught me how to make cavatelli, a pasta from Sicily. It's like gnocchi but made from semolina flour and served with a meat sauce. As part of his job interview, Carnevale (then the head chef at Mayfair's Bar Trattoria Semplice) had to cook dishes that reflected the restaurant. Given the opulent setting (oil paintings adorn the restaurant), Carnevale kept it simple. The taglierini cacio e pepe (taglierini with pecorino cheese and black pepper) he cooked that day is now on the menu. Novikov himself is extremely hands-on with the menu, which changes each season. "I suggest new dishes, and we taste everything," Carnevale says. "He told me, "I would like to have healthy food from the Mediterranean; when I come here I want to feel as if I'm in Sicily or Sardinia.