On the many trips across Ukraine Anna Voloshyna took to research her upcoming cookbook, she had to wear a helmet and a bulletproof vest. “Not that it would have helped me if anything happened,” she says. An ocean away from her war-torn home country, in Oakland, CA, Voloshyna is proudly browsing through her second book, Ukraïne: Recipes and Stories from Kyiv to the Black Sea, out in October. To complete it, she made several trips to regions around the country with photographer Jason Perry, combining volunteering with interviewing locals and cooking with them. Was her life in actual danger, occasionally being close to the frontline? Perhaps. But, determined to bring the book to fruition, Voloshyna never gave it a second thought.
Voloshyna was born in a small Ukrainian village near Mykolaiv, and moved to the Bay Area in 2011. In the U.S, she discovered a passion for cooking and hosting, starting a blog and a series of Ukrainian pop-ups and later earning a degree in Culinary Arts from the San Francisco Culinary School. Social media provided another way to connect with newer audiences, solidifying her status as a confident ambassador for Ukrainian cuisine—an achievement crowned with award-winning, bestselling Budmo, which still runs strong at cookbook clubs and fundraisers, and came out in early 2022.
Anna Voloshyna with a spread of dishes from the book.
Photo: Jason Perry
“I didn’t think I’d write another Ukrainian cookbook because I thought I’d told everything I wanted to tell,” Voloshyna tells Vogue. But then, months before Budmo’s release, Russia’s full-scale invasion began. “I understood that I needed to write a book that is 100% Ukrainian and photographed on location—to show how unique and different we are, and to bring Ukraine to people who can no longer visit”
The Russia-Ukraine war forced Voloshyna to dig deeper: Ukraïne is part-cookbook, part-travelogue, fulfilling Voloshyna’s desire to get familiar with parts of the country she had never been to, and to connect with fellow Ukrainians in order to uncover and flesh out deeply regional recipes, like white borshch from Western Ukraine or Carpathian cheesecake. The book, divided by geographic areas, is peppered with thoughtful essays and travel vignettes that help places like Odesa and Kyiv come to life. Each recipe offers a primer on a different corner of the country’s culinary history and cultural identity.
While Voloshyna had a rough outline in mind prior to starting—mostly locations, places, and dishes she wanted to feature, taste, and discover—she had mixed expectations about the research trips, which often started with flying into Poland and crossing the border by foot, or driving an ambulance from Amsterdam to Ukraine, to weave in a volunteering effort.
