When I opened my first restaurant, just before the war began, I was a perfectionist. My time in an army unit taught me about discipline and what’s really important
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very chef longs to open their own restaurant so, when I did, it felt like a dream. I had been away working in some of the best restaurants in Europe. My business partner had a great spot for a restaurant in the centre of Dnipro, my home city in Ukraine, and we opened to rave reviews. My team and I were all a similar age and we had a shared vision: to create modern Ukrainian food.
But by February 2022, just three months later, we knew war with Russia was likely. I was already in touch with friends in the army and, if Russia invaded, I knew I would fight. When the war started, all the team gathered in the restaurant and I said I would understand if anybody wanted to leave Dnipro and move west, where it was safer, which lots of people were doing. Nobody wanted to. We decided that anyone who wasn’t going to join the army would keep the restaurant going. The team started cooking for hospitals and the national guard, and making up food packs for people who needed them.
The war was a massive shock for us, but it was also a time when everyone pulled together. Suppliers were helping – they would call and say: “We’ve got 10kg of sweet potato, do you want them?” You would put a message on the group chat with other restaurants and bars saying you’d had a request to feed 400 people. Other restaurants in the city would give or swap food. Everyone was sharing – it was a new way of operating.
