A Ukrainian chef based in London is setting up a restaurant with his partner and hopes to employ Ukrainian refugees that have found themselves in the UK following the Russian invasion in February of this year.
Ukrainian chef Yurii Kovryzhenko and his partner Olga Tsybytovska will open the restaurant on Brompton Road in Chelsea, which will serve Ukrainian delicacies and traditional dishes. The restaurant is called Mriya, which translates to ‘dream’ in English. Once open, it will have 37 seats for customers both indoors and outdoors and a vodka bar that will serve vodka-infused drinks and cocktails.
The restaurant also has specialist fermentation rooms to produce many of the fermented products that play such a big role within Ukrainian cuisine.
Speaking to CODE magazine, Yurii said:
"Mriya means dream in Ukrainian, and we as a nation are dreaming of victory, and the opportunity to host people again. We want to share our culture. Historically, Ukrainians are real dreamers. In that sense the restaurant is exciting, because it’s the start of a story, the realisation of a dream. The Russians can destroy our homes, but not our dreams."
Yurii is a well-known chef who has won countless awards for his food, including Global Chef Awards 2017, Ambassador of Taste for the Global Gastronomy 2021, 2022, and Gold Medal Best of Gastronomy 2021. He has appeared on TV shows in Ukraine and author of several books about cookery. He was trained at some of the best chef schools in Europe.
Since the beginning of the war Yurii and his partner have hosted 20 charity dinners in order to raise funds for the Ukrainian refugees and those affected by the conflict, in all raising £400,000. Among the notable guests at these dinners were British chef Jamie Oliver and Michelin-starred chefs Jason Atherton, Tom Sellers, Tom Kitchin and Tom Brown.
Around 15 million people have been displaced by the ongoing war and around 77,000 Ukrainians are now living in the UK as refugees.
[Based on reporting by: The London Economic]
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