KYIV, Ukraine — Ukraine’s most famous chef, Yevhen Klopotenko, calls himself a “culinary independence fighter.” His longtime weapon is borsch, the meaty beet stew that’s synonymous with Ukrainian identity. And he even wielded it last month on Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
“Your life will be divided into two: Before you tried my borsch and after you tried my borsch,” Klopotenko told Blinken, who dined at the 37-year-old chef’s Kyiv restaurant, 100 rokiv tomu vpered (100 years back to the future), during an official visit. (Often written “borscht” in English, the stew is also widely eaten across Eastern Europe and Russia.)
Klopotenko is best known for leading the successful campaign to list borsch on UNESCO’s list of cultural heritage in urgent need of safeguarding. This was part of his longtime quest to, as he calls it, “de-colonize” Ukraine’s cuisine, which he says has been stifled for centuries by Soviet communism and Russian imperialism. Klopotenko has worked for years with historians to pore through Ukrainian literary manuscripts for references about dishes cooked hundreds of years ago.
Voice of Ukraine 