Ukrainian refugees open cafe in Playa Vista: ‘It helps us process our grief’

On the first floor of a residential building in Playa Vista a small restaurant has opened its doors, just across the street from a pocket park with a fountain. About a dozen dishes on its menu are vareniki, or dumplings, filled with potatoes, sweet cheese and turkey. A bouquet of blue and yellow roses drawn on the wall resembles the map of Ukraine. A sign next to it reads, “Mom, please,” the cafe’s name, a reminder of the peaceful life its owners had back home.

In the kitchen, three women busily work to form round pieces of dough and fill them with cherries before shaping each piece into a braided pattern.

There are many restaurants in Southern California that offer Eastern European cuisine but the Playa Vista restaurant that opened in May has one unique trait: its owners are Ukrainian refugees from Mariupol who fled to Los Angeles after the Russian full-scale invasion.

“We were sad when we left Ukraine, so to distract ourselves we decided to open a restaurant,” said Inna Kochetova, who moved with her family in April 2020. “It helps us to get busy and process our grief.”

Kochetova, and her husband Oleksii Kochetov and her mother-in-law Olena Kochetkova are among the Ukrainian refugees who recently settled in Southern California after the start of the war. (Ukrainian surnames change depending on the gender of the person. Typically, the feminine form is the same as the male form but ends with an “a”).

Inna Kochetova, 32, was born in Mariupol. A video on her Youtube channel from two years ago depicts a young woman in a leopard-print top and pants outfit, dancing and smiling among pigeons, to the sound of a Ukrainian song in a public square in Mariupol.

“We are in my native city of Mariupol,” Kochetova said in the video that drew more than 2,000 views. “The city of the sea, city of a factory and city of romance.”

In her blog, she reviewed new restaurants while capturing the beauty of Mariupol, filming the city’s omnipresent pigeons, laidback beachgoers and seniors playing harmonicas.

Her carefree life came to an abrupt halt last year when Russia invaded her country and Mariupol became known around the world for enduring relentless bombardments that have nearly destroyed the city.

After a nearby apartment building in her neighborhood vanished in a dark cloud during a Russian bombing, Kochetkova and her daughter Alisa fled the country. Her husband Oleksii, away on a business trip in Kyiv when the bombings struck across Ukraine last April, got in his car and began to make his way to Mariupol to help his parents escape the violently shocking early days of the war.

But it was too late. Oleksii could not get past the bombings and attacks on the route to Mariupol. As he struggled to return home, his mother Olena was working in the family bakery in Mariupol alongside her husband Sergey. She stepped outside just as a Russian rocket hit the building, setting the bakery aflame and killing her beloved husband.

A neighbor helped Olena pull her husband’s body from the rubble. Amidst their grief they buried Sergey in the backyard of their once-quiet house as shelling pounded other buildings close by. Olena escaped to a nearby town where she was picked up by a motorist, a stranger willing to help, who drove her to the Hungarian border. After many ordeals, she eventually reunited with Oleksii, Inna and Alisa in Budapest and the family traveled to Tijuana, a major destination for Ukraine refugees, and entered the U.S. in April 2022.

On a recent weekday morning, dressed in a blue T-shirt and white apron, she worked in the kitchen of the family’s new restaurant, “Mom, please,” next to two other Ukrainian women as they all folded pieces of dough. Working at the restaurant, she said, has helped her keep her mind off the past.

“While I’m busy here, I feel fine,” Elena said with tears in her eyes. “As soon as I stop working, I start thinking about what we’ve been through.”

Soon after arriving in Los Angeles, the Kochetkovs family started making Ukrainian dishes at their home in Brentwood, where they were hosted by an American family. They froze the food and sold it online. Inna came up with a design for the packaging and social media strategy, quickly attracting nearly 5,000 followers on Instagram.

Soon, customers began encouraging them to open a restaurant.

As owners of multiple businesses in Ukraine, including a chain of sushi bars they owned in Kyiv and Mariupol, Oleksii and Inna knew how to run a restaurant. This year, they took a leap of faith to open “Mom, please.”

They fell in love with Playa Vista, Inna said, as soon as they spotted the family homes and tall trees on Jefferson Boulevard, an area that reminded them of Mariupol’s city center. It didn’t take them long to find an empty storefront at 13151 Fountain Park Dr. across the street from a small park.

After studying the restaurant business in Los Angeles, they discovered that many restaurants that offered Slavic cuisine were launched by expats from the former Soviet republics. Because of the ongoing war, it was not surprising that some immigrants and Russian speakers in L.A. had taken sides. The couple found that many Ukrainians avoided visiting Russian restaurants and looked for restaurants that offered Ukrainian food exclusively.

“At first it was scary to open a restaurant away from West Hollywood where many Ukrainians live,” Inna said. “But it turned out people are willing to drive if they like a place.”

The restaurant’s menu includes pizza and some of the staples of Ukrainian cuisine, including tvorozhniki, or sweet cottage cheese patties, and nine kinds of dumplings filled with turkey, potatoes and sweet cottage cheese. Recently they added borscht, dessert and breakfast items.

Twelve employees including several Ukrainians work at the restaurant, which is open seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. The couple hopes to create more jobs as their restaurant expands — and employ more Ukrainian refugees.

Along the way, they have learned some unexpected things about the melting pot that is Los Angeles. Surprisingly, their vareniki and pelmeni are a hit not just among Ukrainians, but also Asian American customers whose own cooking often includes dumplings.

“On a weekend we have a long line of customers forming outside the restaurant,” Oleksii said. “We really didn’t expect our dumplings to be so popular.”

The family plans to help other business owners across the country to open franchises of their restaurants.

“We want every city in the U.S. to have a place where people can buy a dish and purchase frozen food cooked by Ukrainian women and have a piece of Ukrainian soul,” Inna said.

On a recent sunny morning, a customer walked into the restaurant as the Ukrainian pop-rock band Quest Pistols played in the background. Round tables were set up with rattan chairs and decorated with vases filled with dry spikelets. Dishes and coffee cups handmade by a Ukrainian artist were stacked on a shelf. Oleksii, looking at the scene, said he was happy to have a business that keeps him busy. But he thinks about his home country every day.

“I still hope to go back one day to visit my dad’s grave,” he said.

Inna said she hasn’t stopped dreaming about returning to Ukraine but is proud of the work they’ve done in the U.S.

“We are always critical of ourselves and want to make things better,” she said. “But we make things from our soul and that probably resonates with our guests.”

Source: Orange County Register