ENGMriya: Ukrainian сhef Yurii Kovryzhenko opened his first restaurant in London. In-depth interview

Note: The conversation took place before Mriya opened its doors in July.

Mriya’s menu: From borshch to courgette fritters with stracciatella

Yurii Kovryzhenko is 39 years old. He spent the majority of his life working in kitchens. In 2012, the Ukrainian chef launched Kobzar, a restaurant serving Ukrainian cuisine in Georgia’s capital Tbilisi. In 2014–2017 he was responsible for the Vintage Nouveau restaurant in Vintage, a hotel in Lviv, in western Ukraine. In 2019, he launched a Ukrainian restaurant called Trypillia in South Korea. He has also collaborated with D’Arte, a restaurant group in Riga, Latvia, and has divided his time between Ukraine and Latvia since 2020. Over the course of the past 12 years, Kovryzhenko has collaborated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine, and Ukrainian embassies abroad, to popularise Ukrainian cuisine around the world. Michelin Guide has written about Kovryzhenko “modernising Ukrainian cuisine”. The chef also keeps a list of countries where he has cooked and served borshch; the list is currently 30 countries strong.

Mriya, which means “dream” in Ukrainian, is Kovryzhenko’s first restaurant as both chef and co-owner. He says that he envisions his London “neo-bistro” as an opportunity to showcase Ukrainian cuisine to London audiences. At Mriya, he creates “lighter” versions of Ukrainian dishes, and puts his twist on them, to initiate the Brits into Ukrainian food. For example, his menu boasts courgette fritters with stracciatella, seasonal borshch, and a citrus tart, which Kovryzhenko perfected during his tenure at Vintage in Lviv.

– When do you expect Mriya to open?

– The restaurant will open its doors in July. We were aiming for 15 July at first, but now we realise that we won’t be able to open for the public until 20 July. Before that, we’ll hold several private dinners for people who supported us along the way and whose opinion we value. For example, we’ll host all the chefs who supported us over these last four months.

– Just last weekend the Financial Times published a “Lunch with the FT” interview with Serhii Plokhy, one of the most respected scholars of Ukrainian history based in the US. But the conversation took place in Ognisko, a Polish restaurant in London, for lack of restaurants serving Ukrainian food...

– When we started to think about opening a restaurant we analysed the market [in London] and decided that there are no restaurants serving Ukrainian cuisine.

There are some, what would you call them, tuck shops, eateries serving fish aspic decorated with roses carved out of carrots and olives stuck in the fish’s eyes. Or eateries serving the shuba salad, which is a relic of the communist past. Or they were serving okroshka and rassolnik. Why are you doing all this? “Well, people love it.”

I understand that rationale, but I’m in favour of a clean slate. I wouldn’t want to take a foreigner to a place like that, to have those places represent my national cuisine. That’s why Mriya is, in that sense, a culinary embassy of Ukraine.

– I know it’s a broad question, but what aspects of Ukrainian cuisine would you like to showcase in Mriya?

– First of all, I want to show that it can be light. Many foreigners think that Ukrainian food is very heavy, greasy, and unhealthy. Meanwhile, most people in the civilised world are conscious of their health and try to consume less fat, less cholesterol. So we’ll cook a lighter version of Ukrainian cuisine.

– So you won’t serve any varenyky with fried lardons?

– No. Maybe they’ll be part of some special menu at some point, but we’ll never have them on the main menu. Though we will have varenyky with cherries. And holubtsi [cabbage rolls] will be made with courgette flowers instead of cabbage.

– This speaks to your long-standing passion for flowers.

– I was the first person to introduce edible flowers in Ukraine. People made fun of me at first, but then within the next four or five years it became a trend, and chefs started to stick flowers everywhere they could think of, without regard to whether they added anything to the dish.

– Going back to something you said earlier, Mriya will have both an a la carte and a set menu?

– Yes, at the beginning we will have an a la carte menu with 25 dishes, a five-course tasting menu and a special set menu that will regularly change.

– Have you decided on the five dishes for the tasting menu?

– Yes. The first one will be courgette oladky, or fritters, which we’ll serve with stracciatella instead of sour cream.

– Is this your take on the dish?

– Yes, and I believe a very successful take. I know there will be a whole army of armchair experts who will say: “Why is he adding Italian cheese to the oladky?”

Well, first of all, any cuisine has the potential to enrich Ukrainian cuisine, as long as it doesn’t obscure its flavours. What is the main element of Ukrainian cuisine that we have to preserve and protect? Purity of flavour. Ukrainian cuisine doesn’t use any aggressive seasonings or spices. We have salt, black pepper, and thyme. That’s it.

– And that’s considered a flaw.

– It’s not a flaw. It’s a form of art, being able to create a dish that people will want to eat again and again using only salt and pepper as seasoning. Because in Indian cuisine, making a delicious dish is not a problem: you just add a handful of curry powder, and it already tastes like Indian food. [he laughs] Or in Chinese cuisine: you just add some soy sauce, which is, in essence, a naturally occurring form of monosodium glutamate (MSG), and the dish becomes pretty delicious.

Ukrainian cuisine has more in common with French or British cooking, those culinary traditions which don’t use that many spices.

When I attended the Ferrandi cooking school [in Paris], my professor told me that “the biggest problem” French cuisine faces right now is that “there are too many migrants”. French people don’t want to work in kitchens, because it is really hard work. The majority of people who work in kitchens are guys from Asia, Africa, and so on. And they are introducing their culture and their spices into [French] cuisine. And the purity of French flavour dissipates, it gets lost…

– This might seem like a disadvantage to purists, but it can also be an advantage. Lots of new and interesting things can emerge from this cross-pollination.

– It’s great when new things emerge. Fusion is great. After all, each cuisine lives and evolves. It is like language: if it isn’t evolving, it dies. It’s always affected by a whole host of different factors. Ukrainian cuisine also evolved under different influences: the Mongols brought their dumplings, which became varenyky, the Turkish peoples introduced dolma, which became holubtsi…That’s how all cuisines evolve.

But you have to be careful when mixing different things together, it’s like mixology in a bar. You can combine lots of stuff – and the cocktail will end up being overwhelming.

– And, to extend the cocktail analogy, you have to know your classics.

– Yes, it’s about the art of mixing things in such a way as to not do any harm, like doctors.

I’m trying to enrich Ukrainian cuisine without changing its flavours. My goal is to preserve the flavours that I remember since childhood and that I have discovered during my travels throughout Ukraine. To preserve those flavours but also make them legible within the context of our time.

So I believe that, for example, courgette oladky with stracciatella are a genius combination. It’s phenomenally simple and phenomenally delicious, because the texture of stracciatella is somewhat similar to that of sour cream. It’s less sour, a bit fattier, but overall is a good substitute for sour cream – and doesn’t affect the flavour of the oladky in any way.

– From what I’ve seen in your menus, you’ve never been afraid of adapting and changing different dishes. But how do you find balance? Because if there is too much experimentation, if you serve too much stracciatella so to speak, then the Ukrainian flavours could become obscured.

– I’ve never been afraid of adapting dishes. And I’m always trying to achieve balanced flavours. Food is always about flavour, about taste. My main goal is to preserve the flavour. But I can do whatever I want with the form.

For example, you close your eyes and try a spoonful of something and you think: “Wow, when I was a kid, mom and I used to go to Kherson, and I ate this strawberry jelly there prepared by auntie Valia.” But then you open your eyes and see…

– And see your borshch with beetroot jelly.

– Or borshch, yes. But the most important thing for me is to convey the Ukrainian flavours. The form that allows me to do that is a whole other question.

Take the Japanese, for example: they eat with their eyes first, then with their nose, and only then with their mouth. If they don’t like something visually, they won’t eat it. As someone with an arts background, the way food looks is very important for me.

– As for replacing sour cream with stracciatella: was this a conceptual decision, or one you were forced to make by your circumstances? You often talk about being unable to find products that are needed to prepare Ukrainian dishes abroad. What’s the availability and cost of produce in London?

– I’m lucky that I’m in London, that I’ve not stayed behind in South Korea, where I opened Trypillia right before the lockdown. In Asia, there is a huge problem with produce that can convey authentic Ukrainian flavours. But the UK has all the produce that you can find in Ukraine. I’ve already said that British cuisine is quite similar to Ukrainian, there is lots of overlap. For example, our blood sausage – here they have black pudding or haggis.

– Maybe there are examples of things that are difficult to find or that cost too much?

– Buckwheat, for example. And grains in general. The only kasha Britons eat is porridge for breakfast. But we have pearl barley, millet and buckwheat on our menu.

– Okay, so the first course on your set menu is the courgette oladky with stracciatella. What’s next?

– Our second course is vinaigrette. This season we’ll serve it with strawberries and crawfish.

Third course is borshch, naturally. With pampushky – that’s a must. In the summer we’ll use sour cherries and red currants to achieve the characteristic sour flavour. I’ll use duck for the stock because we’re trying to avoid pork as much as we can. In the UK, pork features on the menus of either traditional English restaurants or in pubs; maybe in Chinese restaurants. They’re obsessed with living healthily here – so 30% of our menu will be vegetarian.

– What happens after the borshch?

– After the borshch there will be a chicken Kyiv or a steamed pike-perch patty.

– I know you’ve launched a whole campaign to recover the reputation of chicken Kyiv. You insist that it’s a Ukrainian and not a generically Soviet dish.

– Exactly right, [Russia] has stolen it just like it has stolen borshch. And just like in the case of borshch, there are historical facts that prove that it is a Ukrainian dish. For example, [Pavlo] Skoropadskyi documented it in his memories from Ukraine in 1918. Ihor Lylio, a historian, says that “If you can show me documents that prove that this has taken place earlier elsewhere, I will fully agree with you.” I like that position a lot, so I’m really trying to convey the fact that it’s a Ukrainian dish.

Of course it’s a dish inspired by French cuisine, by classic cotelette – a dish that was prepared using poultry since as early as the 18th century. Obviously, just like Chinese dumplings, it spread around the whole world. But when armchair critics start comparing [chicken Kyiv] with, for instance, cordon bleu, I always respond that their only similarity is that both are made from chicken. That’s it.

– What’s the fifth course on your menu?

– There will be a choice of desserts: either poppyseed cake or citrus tart. The tart is a gluten-free alternative. I always try to offer an option to people who have allergies or intolerances, so there’s always some sort of a neutral dish on the menu. For example, this dessert consists of jellied orange segments, which were one of the most popular desserts at Vintage. Because it’s our first menu and we have to make a confident entry on the market, I put it on our menu straight away.

– How much would this tasting menu cost?

– Around £70. It’s is in the upper-middle segment of the market, I would say. A dinner in London usually costs around £35–50. Somewhere between £50–100 is more than average. Over £100 is expensive.

– Will the a la carte menu offer different pricing points?

– Yes, we expect an average bill to amount to around £60–65, without wine or drinks.

Employing Ukrainians and working with partners

“Mriya will embody every Ukrainian’s dreams of victory, return home and, of course, the rebuilding of our Mriya and of our dreams, which the orcs destroyed in the first week of the war, literally and metaphorically,” Yurii Kovryzhenko wrote when announcing the launch of his London restaurant [referring to the destruction of Mriya by Russian forces early on in the war; the Ukrainian-built plane was the largest in the world]. In his conversation with The Village Ukraine, Kovryzhenko says that Mriya, for him, is a social enterprise: he is planning to employ Ukrainians who have ended up in the UK as a result of the war in the 12 positions that the restaurant will need to fill before opening. Kovryzhenko told us about his co-investors – a Georgian lawyer and a Lviv restaurateur among them – and how he goes about looking for staff.

– In your Facebook post, you emphasised that you want to create employment opportunities for Ukrainian refugees in the UK. Did you mean your entire team? Have you been successful so far?

– When we realised that the restaurant really was going to happen, we immediately decided that it would be a social enterprise: part of the revenue will be donated to Ukrainian aid funds. In addition, the restaurant should offer employment opportunities to Ukrainians. We have 12 open positions so far…

– That’s all of your staff or just the kitchen?

– That’s all the staff, yes. The restaurant is not that big, we have 45 covers inside and 18 outside, in our little courtyard. We should be able to manage with 12 people in the beginning, but I think when we start operating at full steam, we’ll hire another three or four people. We’ll monitor how busy we are, but overall I’d like to offer jobs to 20 people.

We are trying to hire Ukrainians in all 12 positions that are currently available. The biggest problem is that the waiters have to speak English. We’ve already received around 300 applications for our 12 positions, but only about 20 of them speak English. There are absolutely harrowing situations, when a deputy director of a research institute, a woman with several degrees, applied for the dishwasher’s position. My heart just sinks when I see things like that, I don’t really have anything to say. I understand that this is Ukraine’s intelligentsia, that this person has devoted her life to science, and now she is prepared to work as a dishwasher.

But as a person with 20 years of experience in the restaurant business, I know that being a dishwasher in a restaurant is absolute hell.

– So you’re no longer just a “culinary embassy” but asked to fulfil the functions of the actual embassy.

– We’ve heard so many stories. I’ve also been unpleasantly surprised by the way some Ukrainians go about it: for example, they might call you about jobs at 22:00, or at 07:30 on a Sunday. Or they just send a WhatsApp message: “What can you offer me? I’m in London. What work do you have?” There’s no template for how to respond to people, their requests are very different.

On the other hand, we’ve already found several women who had experience as restaurant managers in Ukraine and the UK. I’d like our team to be 100% Ukrainian.

– I don’t know how far down the line you were when you announced [you’re opening Mriya], but the plan to open it by mid-July sounds quite ambitious. As far as I know, there was another restaurant on Mriya’s premises beforehand. Did that make things easier for you?

– I’ll tell you a story about how we found the premises. Back in February, I met a Ukrainian journalist who’d lived in London for a long time. It was the first week of the [full-scale] war, we were helping sort humanitarian aid at the Ukrainian centre, cooked something for the volunteers. And this journalist said that a friend of hers was in charge of several Georgian restaurants in the UK.

I still remember that moment…She dialled a phone number, put her phone on the table between us, turned on the loudspeaker and said: “Mako, I want to introduce you to a chef called Yurii, he’s Ukrainian, from Kyiv, he’s in London now.” I heard her friend say: “Yurii, a chef. From Tbilisi?” And I said: “Mako?” I realised that she had been my regular customer at the Kobzar restaurant [in Tbilisi] 12 years ago.

– What are the chances? [he laughs]

– I mean, yeah! No one at that table could understand what was going on. [he laughs] [Mako and I] met, she told me she was working as an executive director of the Georgian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and introduced me to her partner Bachi. They import Georgian wine and mineral water to the UK together. We had dinner with Bachi at the Little Georgia restaurant, had some wine, ate khinkali, but then he disappeared. And then, a month and a half later, he called me out of the blue and said: “Yura, I found it! Let’s go have a look.” As it turned out, he found the premises for a restaurant.

We looked at the premises together and realised that we lucked out. That restaurant opened a year before the [Covid-19] pandemic, it didn’t survive the lockdowns.

– It was called The Gojk, wasn’t it?

– Yes, after the owner’s name, [Simeon] Gojkovych, from Serbia. They wanted to open a nice restaurant, but they had zero experience and couldn’t settle on a concept. It had everything on its menu: from chicken curry to venison steaks.

– I looked it up and it was described as a “European restaurant”, which already says a lot. [he laughs]

– “European cuisine”, yes, let’s call it that. [he laughs] They didn’t last long, but that was quite fortunate for us. Obviously we’re changing things in the kitchen, getting new equipment that I can work with. That will take a couple of weeks. For example, we got rid of the grills since we won’t be serving any steak. We’ve devoted a whole cold room to fermentation: we’ll ferment cabbage, cucumbers and tomatoes. Marianna Dushar is helping me with this, we’ll be using her recipes for fermented stuff.

We’re also completely renovating the dining room with the help of a Lviv design bureau called Replus. Those girls are wonderful, they’re flying [to London] this week and will get to work in the restaurant. We’re bringing lots of stuff from Ukraine: for example, the bench by the entrance will be built with old beams from dismantled houses in Lviv. We’ll load it all on buses and bring it to London.

It’s true, if the kitchen wasn’t already here we wouldn’t have been able to do everything so quickly. If we started from zero – utilities, sewage, wet rooms – all of this would have taken at least half a year. But everything has already been built according to the British rules, it’s already got all the necessary certification…

For example, in the UK it’s not the person renting the property who has to get a restaurant licence, but the property owner. And the licence is valid for the rest of their life. Same with alcohol licence. So we’ve received the restaurant with all the relevant documents already in place. We would have had to spend another couple of months just to get all of those.

– Bacho Habunia is also your partner at Mriya, right?

– Yes, he’s our partner, he believes that Ukrainian cuisine can be successful in London. He’s a lawyer, he’s lived here for over 30 years – he’s more British than Georgian now.

– And also tell me about your collaboration with Dima’s Vodka. As far as I understand, Dmytro Deineha is also a partner at Mriya?

– Dmytro, the founder of Dima’s Vodka, has spent most of his life in London. His mom, Anna Shevchenko, brought him over when he was seven. But he speaks great Ukrainian and is incredibly patriotic. He and his mom do a lot to help Ukraine, for example, they buy first-aid kits here in the UK [and send them to Ukraine].

At some point, Dima made this Ukrainian vodka using a variety of different grains, it’s now produced near Zhytomyr [in Ukraine]. It’s quite a large business now, the vodka is excellent in quality, somewhat reminds me of Grey Goose. Dima managed to import 10,000 bottles to the [UK] warehouse before 24 February, this allowed him to keep going with his business.

There’ll be two options for matched drinks to go with the tasting menu: vodka and liqueurs, or wine. We will make our own liqueurs: there will be medovukha, khrinovukha, varenukha, and honey and chilli tincture. We want to put a huge vat of this honey and pepper tincture right at the entrance, so that anyone can get a shot right when they come in.

– What about wine?

– We’ll have a wonderful wine list thanks to Dmytro Honcharuk, a Ukrainian sommelier. He’s lived in London for several years now and had helped devise the wine list for Hide, [Yevgeny] Chichvarkin’s restaurant in London. He’s now working at one of London’s best restaurants, Corrigan’s Mayfair.

We’ll have Ukrainian wines on the menu. We’ve already struck deals with four Ukrainian producers: Beykush, Stakhovsky Wines, Kolonist and Villa Tinta. Over 9,000 bottles are already in the UK, with Dmytro’s help.

We’ll also have Georgian wines. We’re planning to eventually represent all Eastern European countries: Poland, Slovenia, Bulgaria – though not Hungary or Serbia, for political reasons. We’d like to offer a unique wine list, which would appeal to the Brits here, who’d want to come try a wine they haven’t tried before. I’d like for people in the UK to discover all of Eastern Europe, not just Ukraine.

– You mentioned in your post that Mriya has several co-founders, representing both Ukraine and the UK. Are these public partners?

– Dima is a public person, he even conducts communications for Dima’s Vodka in his own name. Bachi is the other partner, and then there’s a restaurateur from Lviv who’s our other co-investor.

Russians in London

Kovryzhenko is opening Mriya in the city that is considered to be one of the world’s business and culinary centres. At the same time, it has also been considered a centre where Russian money and Russian oligarchs are concentrated. We asked Kovryzhenko how a Ukrainian restaurant can operate in the city which is jokingly called “Londongrad” in Russia, and whether he will take bookings from Russian customers.

– You’ve been lucky with the location [of your restaurant]. I navigate London by its football landmarks, so I found it curious that your restaurant is situated near the Chelsea stadium, Stamford Bridge.

– Yes, that’s a curious observation. As soon as someone says Chelsea, the first thought is about oligarchs. [he laughs]

– Not anymore! [Referring to the Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich selling the football club.]

– But we really are lucky with the location, it’s at the intersection of Chelsea and Kensigton: the last street in Chelsea and the first street in Kensington, near the Earl’s Court tube stop. There’s lots of cool Ukrainian spots around: the Ukrainian Embassy, the Consulate, the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, the Saint Sophia spiritual school. We wanted to open our restaurant nearby, so that embassy workers can have their meetings there. And of course we also wanted to be in Zone 1.

– There’s also the fact that aside from being one of the world’s business and culinary capitals, it is also famously known as Londongrad, a place where a lot of Russian wealth, and many Russian citizens, have accumulated. How are you going to handle that?

– If they make reservations under English names and speak English in the restaurant itself, well then why not.

– You know what they’re doing in Georgia now, they put signs on their doors saying something like “Everyone who recognises that Russia is an aggressor state is welcome.”

– Yeah, something like that’s good too. Or we can add a question on the website, so that when you make a reservation you have to answer whether you agree that Russian is an aggressor state. If you select yes, you’re allowed to make a reservation, if no, then sorry, you can’t get a table. [he laughs]

– How might it work in practice? Will you refuse to book tables for people with Russian surnames?

– We work with several platforms: OpenTable, SevenRooms, etc. Of course we’ll monitor who’s booking tables. But there’s a fine line here and I think we’re gonna have to make decisions in each individual case. For example, if Chichvarkin books a table… 

– Will you confirm Chichvarkin’s reservation?

– Or Mikhail Zelman. He really is a good friend to Ukraine. He’s been helping Ukraine since the first days of the [full-scale] war and he’s been helping me personally. He’s mobilised the Jewish diaspora here, even the synagogues. He’s an experienced restaurateur, his experience might greatly help us.

Obviously, we will welcome people whom we know personally, whose political stance we know, who have fled [Putin’s] regime a long time ago. But we don’t know what happens next: we’re entering this market blindly, like newborn kittens.

It’s clear that scandals can’t be avoided. I had a dream about kicking a bunch of Russians out of the restaurant, telling them “Get the hell out of here, out of my sight!” I really have nightmares about that. I worry a lot, I’m really anxious, I hardly sleep anymore. And when I do I have nightmares about these Muscovites. [he laughs]

– I wanted to also ask about your collaboration with Cook for Ukraine: the wonderful Olia Hercules has been helping Ukraine since the first days of the full-scale invasion. You collaborated with her and Jamie Oliver. The other co-founder of Cook for Ukraine is Alissa Timoshkina, which doesn’t sit well with me. On the one hand, she is doing a lot to raise money to support Ukraine; on the other, she made her name on Russian cuisine, on Russian restaurants in London. What do you think about that?

– I’ve got very good relationships with Olia and Alissa, in the beginning they helped us a lot. I think Olia and I will definitely collaborate in the restaurant. As for Alissa, sure, she did make her name on Russian cuisine. But the main thing is that she’s got Ukrainian roots…

– She mentioned that her grandfather died during Holodomor...

– Yes, in Mykolaiv Oblast. So it’s complicated. It’ll probably be similar to our relationship with Zhenia [Yevgeny] Chichvarkin and Misha [Mikhail] Zelman. They’re the ones helping to fight the regime. They’re like the Svoboda Rosii [Freedom of Russia] Legion which is fighting alongside our guys on the front line. These people are the Freedom of Russia Legion on the culinary front. So that’s how I feel about them.

Culinary diplomacy

In an interview from early February 2022 Yurii Kovryzhenko said that he wanted to focus on his work in Ukraine and was planning to open a Ukrainian restaurant in Kyiv. He travelled to London on 18 February to take part in a culinary event that the Ukrainian Embassy in the UK had invited him to take part in. He was not able to return to Kyiv after the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion a few days later, on 24 February.

“It was supposed to be a nine-day trip, my return ticket to Kyiv was for 27 February. We were organising a series of dinners for Ukrainian Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko, members of the UK’s parliament and other Brits who had been supporting Ukraine. When the [full-scale] war started, Ryanair sent me an email stating my flights had been cancelled,” Kovryzhenko recalls. He adds that at first he was planning to go back to Ukraine, but eventually decided to find something to do in London: “During the first three days, I wanted to go back, I was raring to go: ‘I’ll go back and join the Armed Forces of Ukraine!’ But people told me: ‘And what will you do there? Make canapes? Man, you’re in one of the wealthiest cities in the world: the only other place where you could do what you can do here is New York’.”

During more than four months in London, Kovryzhenko and his partner Olha Tsybytovska took part in a series of fundraising events, which raised money for support for Ukraine. He says that they were able to donate around £450,000 to various charitable organisations. Kovryzhenko also prepared Ukrainian food for the Brave Ukraine night and auction at the Tate Gallery in London. Boris Johnson, the then-Prime Minister of the UK, took part in the event, which saw Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s jacket auctioned off. Another event took place in April at the legendary celebrity chef Jamie Oliver’s headquarters, where Kovryzhenko also prepared Ukrainian food for a fundraising dinner.

– You mentioned that you raised over £400,000 during various fundraising events. You also said that you recently took part in an event which raised over 4 million hryvnias [almost £102,000]. What do you think was most important in terms of supporting Ukraine?

– We organised a series of dinners with Cook for Ukraine, a lunch with chef Richard Corrigan, a dinner with four Michelin-starred chefs [Jason Atherton, Tom Sellers, Tom Kitchin, and Tom Brown], an event with Jamie Oliver… So many things happened in the last couple of months that it feels like it’s been a lifetime of events.

We also organised auctions as part of our dinners, because the dinner itself brings in some money, but not that much. So we’ve been looking for contacts and collaborations. For example, we had a great collaboration with the Usyk Fund [founded by Oleksandr Usyk, a Ukrainian boxer, world champion in two weight classes, having held the unified WBA, IBF, WBO and IBO heavyweight titles since 2021]: he was in London and attended the dinner, as well as donating several items for the auction. A volunteer who’s helping on the front donated Mike Tyson’s champion’s belt from his personal collection.

– Few countries support Ukraine as much as the UK does right now. How do you experience this in London?

– I feel that the UK has been much more interested in Ukraine and Ukrainian cuisine. Before, there were only a few things [that attracted the UK’s interest], but now they’re discovering more of Ukrainian culture. For example, there have been several pop-ups with clothes by Ukrainian designers, and in July we’ll hold an Ivana Kupala [summer solstice] celebration at the disused Battersea Power Station.

I wouldn’t say that something stands out in particular, it’s a combination of things. It’s about how the media represents Ukraine, which, among other things, helps us introduce people to Ukrainian food. After all, The Guardian and Financial Times [which are published in the UK] are read by English speakers all over the world: in the UK, in Australia, in the US. So we can’t separate the UK from the rest of the English-speaking world, and the UK provides a powerful push for all of this to reach a global audience.

That’s also what made Mriya possible. It’s a bit of wordplay: I had a dream about cooking modern Ukrainian food abroad for a long time. That’s why I haven’t opened a Ukrainian restaurant serving Ukrainian food as I imagine it in Ukraine; I think the pre-war Ukraine was not ready for it yet. We experimented with Ukrainian dishes a lot when I was a chef at the restaurant in Hotel Vintage. I think it was one of the most creative restaurants of its time: the dishes that we were making then were not necessarily easy to understand for an ordinary Ukrainian, but foreigners loved them. As I continue to cook my version of Ukrainian food in the UK I can see that it’s greeted with enthusiasm.

– Returning to your Ukrainian restaurant in Ukraine: in an interview with Restorator last year you said that you were planning to open your own restaurant of Ukrainian cuisine in Kyiv and that it could become your flagship location. Is Mriya a substitute for this plan? Are you planning to go back to Ukraine and open a new restaurant there?

– [Mriya is in] no way [a substitute]. I understand that a Ukrainian chef has to have a restaurant serving Ukrainian food as their flagship location. They might have other restaurants anywhere in the world: many chefs [with experience of working in Michelin-starred restaurants] open restaurants all over the world. For example, after the dinner we organised together with Jason Atherton last week, he went straight to Dubai, where he is opening a new restaurant. There’s no one preventing me from working in different directions, I’ve not had any issues with dividing my time between two countries before the war.

– You were working with a restaurant group in Latvia, weren’t you?

– Yes, I was always going back and forth between Riga and Kyiv. It was quite convenient: two hours on the plane, and you’re there. Just like driving from Pozniaky to central Kyiv in the morning. [he laughs]

As soon as the war is over – I’ve got a plan and an investor [for a restaurant in Ukraine]. But the restaurant in Ukraine will be a bit different, it won’t be fine dining, like the one in London, but something else. Here I want to showcase something modern and refined, not something more homey.

– For a long time you described your work as “culinary diplomacy”, working with Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and with Ukrainian Embassies. Is opening Mriya the continuation of this for you, or something entirely new?

– It’s definitely a continuation on this line of activity.

– But it’s a new format for interacting with an audience, right? In [your earlier culinary diplomacy work] you took part in professional culinary events, organised events with embassies, talked to foreign media. [At Mriya] you’ll be able to communicate directly with customers.

– That’s not quite right. It’s true, [the restaurant] offers a more concentrated approach, because when you’re opening a restaurant you’re only interacting with your audience in one specific place. Travelling, working at festivals and other events, working with media has a more immediate effect, but a shorter-lasting one. A restaurant, in turn, has a more concentrated and longer-lasting effect. These are similar tools that produce different results.

– Mriya is the first restaurant you are opening as both a chef and a co-founder. You’ve had a long journey to this project. How do you envision your role within the restaurant? Will you work as a chef, on a chef’s schedule, or will you be more of a brand-chef responsible for strategy?

– At first I will obviously work as a chef with almost daily shifts – apart from the days when I have to be present at various events. For example, almost as soon as we launch the bistro, I’ll be taking part in a culinary theatre performance at the Latitude music festival on 22-23 July, I’ll hold a masterclass on how to prepare a Ukrainian dish.

Of course I’ll be in the restaurant almost every day whenever I’m not busy with other events, because it’s my restaurant. I’m not a hired worker, I’m the owner of literally every spoon and every plate. And also I understand that I have to pay wages to my staff who are refugees and who depend on me for it. In the future, when we open the second, third, and fourth restaurants I will become more of a brand-chef and I’ll manage the restaurant group. For example, Alain Ducasse has 32 restaurants, he just lives in the air now, constantly flying country to country.

– Do you have plans to open more restaurants?

– We have an idea to open Ukrainian restaurants in major world capitals: Paris, Rome, Tokyo and, possibly, New York or Washington, DC. We have registered the Mriya brand almost everywhere we could, so of course we plan to expand to new countries.

There is also a plan to open a second Mriya in London, which will be called Mriya Heritage, after we launch the first one. Our idea is to create a kind of a relaxed, pub-style place where people could come for some stew or other homey dishes like that.

Right now we’re trying to attract the educated public, the intelligentsia, as much as possible, and Mriya Heritage will be about feeding ordinary British people.