In conversation with Alexander Cheves
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov is a cultural producer known to queer ravers in Europe as the founder of Popoff Kitchen, a techno party he started in Moscow in 2017.
Since then, he and the party have travelled the world, with events in Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Istanbul, Belgrade, Brussels, Kyiv, Madrid, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, and Bangkok. All were done under Popoff Kitchen’s culinary code in which DJs are “chefs” and lineups are “menus.”
In 2022, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Nikita fled to Berlin. The party continued operating in Russia until Russian authorities designated what it called the ‘international LGBT movement’ as extremist. “For 6 years, Popoff Kitchen was supporting the LGBTQ+ community in Russia, creating safer spaces for self-expression,” the party’s public statement read. “After Russia banned the international LGBT movement as extremist, we were forced to completely stop operating in Russia, so as not to jeopardise our guests and team.”
Berlin became his home. This spring, he moved again to Paris, and Popoff Kitchen followed. He’s planning a new Asian tour, plus the project’s first run in Latin America. And he’s expanding beyond nightlife, with art exhibits and more in the works.
To reflect on his Berlin chapter, Nikita Egorov-Kirillov sits down with editor Alexander Cheves to talk kitchens, dreams, and moving on.
This is Stall Talk with Nikita Egorov-Kirillov.
Alexander Cheves. Let’s talk about your move to Paris. When did that happen?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Last January, I went to Paris and launched a new project called CVNTYLAND. I reconnected with some friends there, and they kept saying: “Nikita, Paris suits you so well. Why don’t you live here?” I thought, why don’t I? I realised how much I liked being there, and I already had this feeling that something was going to happen, that Paris was going to be my next place. In March, with the help of a friend, I found an apartment, basically my dream apartment, pretty quickly!
AC. Wow, congrats! We met not long after I moved to Berlin in 2022, at Möbel Olfe, I think. Does that sound right?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Yeah. I first visited Berlin in 2013 and started coming regularly. At that time, flights from Moscow to Berlin were cheaper, so it was normal to fly here for the weekend. The city became important to me in those years. In Berlin, I found a queer community that felt like mine. In Moscow, I knew all the gay clubs and gay parties, but I rarely went to them because I didn’t identify with what I saw there.
“For a while, I felt like I was maybe the wrong kind of gay.”
I only moved here completely after the start of the war. Two days after it began, I was here. It was my home, my refuge.
AC. What’s your favourite thing about France so far?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I’m inspired by French culture in many ways. Gastronomy, music, cinema, art. I was in love with so much of French culture before being there, but now I’m learning French, and it feels like I’m slowly getting access to another layer of something I love.
AC. My boyfriend is from Paris, and I love how he describes the city. How would you describe it?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov.
“Paris is busy, but people value a moment. Even with a coffee in the middle of the day, there’s attention to how it’s served, the cup, the biscuit, how the table looks. Little details with no functional purpose. They just exist to make life more beautiful.”
That feels different from Berlin. And honestly, the relationship to drugs there is different. A lot of friends either don’t use drugs, use them only occasionally, or are fully sober. So new friendships are developing for me through common interests rather than meeting and taking a line. It feels like Paris opened its doors and said, welcome! I feel like I’m going to bloom there.
AC. I’d love to talk about Popoff Kitchen, which I believe started in Moscow in 2017. Take me back to the beginning. How did it start?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. [laughs] There are parts of the origin story that I’ve never told anyone before. But basically, here’s the story. One night, I was sitting in a kitchen with friends in Moscow. Almost all of them were gay men in creative industries. We were smoking and talking, and I said, “Guys, isn’t this strange? We all travel the world. We think of ourselves as international people. But we are only ourselves when we are sitting here, in each other’s kitchens.” What I meant by that is, in Moscow, the way we talked, behaved, flirted, joked and expressed ourselves as queer people, we could only be fully ourselves in private, in each other’s kitchens. Everywhere else, we had to put on layers of armour. So I said, hey guys, we’re all kitchen gays. The kitchen has a very particular meaning in Russian and Slavic culture. The most important conversations happen there. You don’t sit in the living room to tell someone the truth about your life. You end up in the kitchen at four AM.
AC. I know Berlin influenced the idea of the party. How so?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. At this time, I was experiencing queer spaces in Berlin and wanted to bring that feeling back to Moscow. I didn’t want to make another Moscow gay party. I wanted to make something international, and I knew what I did not want, musically. Moscow had many gay clubs, but the music was mostly pop and circuit music. I wanted techno, deep house, and different kinds of electronic music that basically had no place in Moscow gay nightlife at that time. That is partly where “Popoff” came from. “Popov” is a common Russian surname. “Pop” was also exactly what I didn’t want musically, so: pop is off. And “popa” in Russian means ass, which made it even better. So it became Popoff Kitchen. But it was hard. How do you find the right crowd if those people don’t go to gay clubs? I was one of those people.
“I invented a person called Sam Popoff. I found photos of a hot, half-naked chef from a bakery in Kansas. I downloaded pictures of him and created a fictional biography, and he became the fictional founder of Popoff Kitchen in Moscow.”
Sam’s mother was Russian, his father American. He had grown up in New Jersey, then his parents separated, and he moved to Moscow with his mom. I lived a second life through him. I used his profile to go into online spaces and find hot gay guys who, like me, were not necessarily going to Moscow gay clubs. I would add them and invite them to Popoff Kitchen as Sam.
“Sometimes guys wanted to hook up with Sam, so I made boundaries for my fictional character. I’d say, sorry, I have a boyfriend, we’re monogamous. But come to the party, it’ll be fun!”
In hindsight, this marketing strategy is completely insane now, and I don’t know how proud I am of it. But it worked!
AC. How did Moscow respond? How did you know it worked?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. It’s important to remember context. This was after Russia’s first “gay propaganda” law. The first Popoff Kitchen was tiny, around 50 people, and I think we rejected the same number at the door because I wanted to create a very particular atmosphere. I had made an agreement with the club that security would stay at the entrance and not patrol the party. I wanted people inside to feel this was their space.
“At some point, everyone was dancing topless, and the vibe was fucking incredible.”
AC. Did you make any money?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. [laughs] No, it was a disaster! [laughs] I lost a lot of money and went home with mixed feelings because I thought it had failed. Friends told me that I had imagined this audience of Moscow gays who wanted techno, sexual freedom, and this kind of queer space. They said those people didn’t exist. After the first one, I thought maybe they were right. Then a man came up and introduced himself as the husband of the DJ, and said, more or less: I’m older, I’ve seen hundreds of gay clubs and parties across the world. You’re probably disappointed. But what you did here is vision. Keep doing it. You will have success.
AC. It sounds like he saved the party.
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. It was what I needed to hear. I started doing Popoff Kitchen every two months. The first were men-only. I wanted to create concentrated sexual energy and establish trust. I wanted people to know this was a safe space and that whatever happened inside stayed inside. We covered phone cameras. But I never wanted Popoff Kitchen to stay a men-only party. I felt that was a dead end. After the fourth one, I opened the doors to a broader audience. A few years later, Popoff Kitchen XXL had thousands of people. By then, it was the entire LGBTQ+ spectrum: gay men in harnesses, lesbians, trans people, drag queens, straight allies, celebrities, half-naked people, totally naked people. It became something I could never have imagined on that first night.
AC. The code is interesting: parties framed as “cooking masterclasses,” DJs called chefs, and lineups called menus. Did you have to do that because of restrictions in Moscow?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I wanted it to be understandable primarily to people I was speaking to. So instead of hiding the concept, I took the kitchen idea to an absurd extreme.
“In this universe, DJs are travelling chefs giving cooking classes. Lineups are menus. With humour, I can communicate the kind of party it is. If a DJ has played Berghain, I’ll write that this chef worked in Berlin’s biggest sausage factory serving 3,000 sausages. People get the joke.”
And if they didn’t, that was okay. People would write to me completely seriously: Hey, I’m vegetarian. Will there be a vegan menu? Or: If I arrive at 2 a.m., will there still be food? I’d write back: Come early. There might not be any food at all.
AC. Is there a night from your Moscow years you’d like to experience again?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. The first night of one of my Horovod festivals. I launched Horovod with a friend from Kyiv, Stas Tweeman, who was behind some major Ukrainian queer parties.
AC. Ah, no way! I just interviewed Stas. His profile is coming soon to Hinterhaus.
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. When we created Horovod, I considered him one of my closest friends. Our relationship got more complicated, and there is a lot of pain in that relationship now. But inside me, there is hope that one day, we can start Horovod again. We organised this special one, one time in Moscow, and Nastia from Kyiv was playing. There were around 2,000 people on the dance floor. I was dancing behind the DJ booth on the main stage with all my friends. Everyone was happy, and there was this incredible unity. People were smiling, dancing naked. And I remember realising that we actually did it.
“I was so happy that I started crying. And knowing everything that happened after, between Russia and Ukraine, to our communities, to all of us individually, that memory has another emotional dimension for me now.”
AC. I know from our past conversations that Berlin was a mixed bag for you. Can you tell me about that?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Berlin was an escape from Russia in the war. So before anything else, it was a refuge. I started volunteering night shifts at Berlin Hauptbahnhof, receiving refugees. It was a strange, emotional period. My reality had collapsed, and at the same time, I was trying to be useful to people whose reality had collapsed in an even more brutal way.
AC. That sounds intense, but good that you did that.
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Thank you. I will always be grateful to Berlin.
“Berlin helped me understand myself sexually. It helped me get rid of complexes and shame around my body. It taught me to be comfortable naked.”
Especially in my earlier years here, it felt safe. But after moving here, I experienced another Berlin. For the first time in my life, I experienced hostility because I was Russian. That was painful because I knew many people in the Berlin queer club scene. I knew organisers of major parties. Some were friends. I had booked many of them in Moscow. We had collaborated.
“When the war began, I thought, if there was any community that would understand the difference between a government and an individual, it would be this one. That’s not what happened.”
Instead, I experienced cancelling and boycotting from parts of the scene. I felt like I constantly had to explain myself because I was Russian. Popoff Kitchen was removed from the lineup of WHOLE Festival after we had been announced. That was heartbreaking. And at the same time, my life became parties, drugs, sex, chills, afterparties. Then this winter, in Asia, I realised I don’t want to go back to Berlin. The feeling was not: I hate Berlin. Not even: I need to leave Berlin. I just no longer knew what I was going back for.
AC. What was the driving force of that? Was it just drugs and growing out of them, or something more?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. It was many things. The Berlin I had fallen in love with was about fun, unity, experimentation, and love. But increasingly I felt that experimentation had turned into people testing their limits in dangerous ways. Like, how long can I stay awake? How many days can I keep going? Some people I met in the scene 12 years ago are no longer alive. Some died from overdose. Some died by suicide. Many friends have depression. Some people arrived with enormous dreams, whose eyes had been full of light, and years later, that light was gone. I want to be careful because I’m not saying this is Berlin, but this is how it started to feel to me.
AC. Any final, big lessons from your time here?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I guess I’ve become sceptical about the idea of “the queer community” as automatically united. I believe in a global queer community, and I think people in the club scene like to think we have created a transnational queer world connected by music. But being queer doesn’t remove geopolitics. I joke that the European queer scene is like Eurovision. At Eurovision, we pretend that countries just vote for songs they like, but everyone knows that geopolitics, alliances, and relationships between countries influence who gives points to whom. I realised that something similar happens within the European queer club scene. Which parties collaborate, who gets invited, who gets booked, and which collectives are welcome are shaped by geopolitics. I experienced this with Popoff Kitchen.
“The fact that the project started in Russia affected how the European club scene related to us, regardless of my own position, the history of the project, or what we actually stood for.”
Across Asia, we have been welcomed with warmth, curiosity, and demand. We’ve built relationships and collaborations there easily. Meanwhile, European bookings have grown difficult. That’s why I call it Queer Eurovision.
AC. That’s a profound observation. Many people just talk about the commercialisation of the scene, how clubs and nightlife have become so expensive.
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I mean, that’s a huge thing too. Some major parties and institutions have become unaffordable for the audience that helped create these cultures. And those who get pushed out first are the most vulnerable: migrants, trans people, people without stable incomes or social security, young people. When the original community can no longer afford the spaces it helped create, the core of those places changes.
AC. Can you tell me an example of that change?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I remember Cocktail d’Amore at Griessmuehle 10 or 12 years ago. Of course, there was a lot of sex, but people really came for the music. The music could be so good, you literally couldn’t leave. Now at some sex-positive parties, it feels like two-thirds of the people are in the darkroom and one-third are on the dance floor. In Berlin, you can have sex with the most beautiful men you’ve ever seen, but there’s another side to it. A lot is connected to chemsex. As someone who likes sober sex, I found it surprisingly difficult to meet someone who wasn’t high or wanting to get high. Eventually I found some fuck buddies where we could smoke weed, have sex, listen to music, dance, and do things that really felt nice to me. But it felt like an exception.
AC. I think Berlin teaches you important lessons about sex. If you survive it, you learn how to do it better.
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Here’s the most important thing I learned: Drug-fuelled trauma bonding is rarely a real connection.
“You can have an intimate talk with someone when you’re high, tell each other your traumas, and feel like you’ve known each other forever. Then you meet them later and they’ve forgotten who you are.”
AC. Does anything in the scene give you hope for it?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Yeah! One of my most inspiring recent experiences was a sober rave, the Sugar Free party by Lunchbox Candy, which is now tracey. It was so different. In the backyard, people weren’t hiding behind sunglasses. They were looking into each other’s eyes.
AC. What will come of Popoff Kitchen in Paris? Or what all do you plan to do there?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. I don’t see myself only as a nightlife promoter. I think of myself as a cultural producer. That was how I worked in Moscow, and that is what I want again.
“I want to work with contemporary art. I want to work in nightlife. I want to produce projects based on what genuinely interests and excites me and not try to fit into one box.”
AC. Any shout-outs, anyone you want to send love to?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Many. Berlin brought Berk Akkaya into my life. He’s an incredibly talented multidisciplinary artist, but he’s also my love, my partner in crime, and many other things that are hard to put in one title. I want to give a shout-out to Mauro Feola. Mauro was the one promoter from the Berlin club scene who, at the moment when I was most in need of support, reached out to me. He used to do Riot, and later we did Riot Kitchen together. He is a beautiful, bright soul. And, of course, my chosen family. I love all of you.
AC. A lot of queer people carry a complex sense of home. We move a lot, spend some years in one place, then another. What does “home” mean to you?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Home is really about people. That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy in Paris now. I already have many people there. And I like moving lightly. When I move, most possessions stay behind. I only take what I really need. I don’t want to recreate the same apartment in every city.
AC. I know your travels in Asia impacted you. Is there a place you have no plan to live in now, but could see yourself living one day?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. Tokyo! I’ve been three times. I’m so inspired by the city. Through a close friend there, I’ve been introduced deeply to Shinto and Japanese ways of thinking about the world, nature, objects, and spirituality. I’m learning Japanese. I can imagine a future where I realise, okay, I live in Japan now.
AC. What advice would you give a queer person who moves to Berlin today?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov.
“There are four tests you have to pass to become a Berliner. Everyone who stays here long enough goes through some version of each of them.”
The first is the apartment. Everyone suffers. First you find a WG, then a temporary room, then another. Finding your own apartment with a proper contract is winning the Berlin lottery. You can cry about it or not, but this is Berlin. The second test is drugs. They are cheap, accessible, and normalised. There is little stigma around them. The challenge is finding your balance. How do you participate without losing yourself? How do you make sure that drugs remain a part of your life, not your whole life? You still need your work and ambitions. The third test is sex. You have to find your own balance there too. Sex is wonderful, but it’s not the most important thing. The fourth test is relationships, and not just romantic. I mean friendships. Be conscious of who you connect with. I’ve watched people arrive here to become artists, discover themselves, whatever. A year later, they’re still talking about those dreams. Two years later, the same dreams. Three years later, sometimes the dreams have vanished from the conversation. Their lives can become a loop. Drugs, sex, party, chill, next party, repeat. Protect your dreams.
“But I also want to say something positive about Berlin, because this is important. However strange you think you are, Berlin has a place for you. You will find your community here.”
If there was something you were ashamed of in your hometown, in Berlin there are people who understand. There is probably an entire community for it. So find your people. Enjoy the freedom. But learn your balance and don’t fucking let this city dim your light.
AC. Well said! Finally, what’s next for you?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. My next Paris project is The Drag Ball of France, a competition-based drag project. And Popoff Kitchen is still going! I’m preparing our third Asian tour for autumn, and after that I’m doing our first Latin America tour.
AC. Where is Popoff Kitchen based now? Does it have a home?
Nikita Egorov-Kirillov. It’s based where I am based. So now its home is Paris. We’ve done our first event there, at Silencio.
“Popoff Kitchen, like me, is not attached to one place anymore. It’s a way I connect with queer communities across the world. And that’s important to me. I still believe the global queer scene is one big family and I’m so happy to be in it.”
I’m also increasingly working in art. I produced my first exhibition in Paris. I brought together queer artists with immigrant backgrounds from Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. We presented it at Hôtel de Ville, and another exhibition is being prepared. So the next chapter is not about replacing nightlife with art or leaving Popoff Kitchen. It’s about letting all these worlds coexist together. And if there’s a promoter anywhere reading this who wants to connect, write to me! I’m ready for you. ★
Follow Nikita Egorov-Kirillov and Pop Off Kitchen on Instagram at @nikitanonstop and @popoffkitchen.
Alexander Cheves is an author and essayist exploring sex, culture, art, and music. Winner of the Geoff Mains Prize and an NLGJA journalism award, he can usually be found dancing shirtless in Berlin or working on his next book. Visit his site and follow him at @badalexcheves.
Images: All images courtesy of Nikita Egorov-Kirillov
