Oleksandr Kovalchuk: 'Modern Ukrainian cuisine is a territory, not a museum'
The Lviv chef explains why ethnographic stylisations damage Ukrainian gastronomy and what is the real formula of 'new Ukrainian cuisine'.
'The biggest enemy of Ukrainian cuisine is not the Soviet legacy but ethnographic stylisation,' Oleksandr Kovalchuk, chef of Lviv's Mons Pius, starts the conversation. The interview takes place in the venue's lab-kitchen where an eight-chef team prepares for the evening shift. 'When I see a restaurant with vyshyvankas on walls, towels, and theatrical waitresses in costume — I get sad. This is not respect for tradition, it is its tourist re-processing.'
Kovalchuk offers his own formula for new Ukrainian cuisine: 'local produce + modern technique + clean flavour.' At Mons Pius the chef works exclusively with farmers in an 80-km radius around Lviv. The menu changes every six weeks by season. 'Our cuisine is a territory, not a museum. In a museum things are preserved unchanged. On a territory — they live and change.' Kovalchuk together with six other Ukrainian chefs is preparing a gastronomic collection 'Ukraine 2030' planning to describe 200 regional dishes with modern interpretations.
