In August, Adam Lawrence travelled overland to Ukraine to cook two dinners: a family-style feast at a countryside estate in Vytachiv, and a tasting menu at Mirali in Kyiv, a restaurant many consider the best in the country. It was his second time cooking there. He carried around seventy kilos of preserves across four borders, only to arrive and find the roads carpeted with the very apricots he had hauled from California.

I put the trip to both chefs. Their answers are published here unedited, as they gave them to me.

Part One: Adam Lawrence

This was your second time cooking in Ukraine, after October 2024. What pulled you back?

Mirali is an exceptional restaurant to work in, and the team is eager to learn new things. They are quick to adapt and genuinely curious. I also knew the challenges. I was unable to bring my knives, and because my food relies so heavily on sourcing, working with what was available made it an enticing challenge. The clientele are equally excited to learn about foreign produce and unfamiliar flavors.

Describe the journey. No flights into Ukraine, so how did you travel?

I first flew from JFK Airport to Chopin International Airport in Warsaw, Poland. I have made a ritual of stopping at a Ukrainian-owned restaurant in Warsaw called Milk Bar, so I stopped in, ate lunch, and bought food to hold me over on the train.

The first train is broken into compartments, each with six seats in two rows of three facing each other. Space is limited, so I brought my large luggage to the bike racks in the concession car and left it there, hoping it would still be there when I got off in Chelm.

We arrived in Chelm, the town on the Polish side of the border, and disembarked to wait for the next train. There is no English there, and the tickets are challenging to navigate, so I decoded mine and got onto the next train.

This train is divided into rooms. Each has two small beds on either side of a small table, a door for privacy, and AC controls and a TV, none of which worked. I was bunked with a man who I soon discovered hadn’t showered and had a snoring problem.

Because the train travelled overnight, I couldn’t see anything outside until daybreak. At the Polish side of the border, right as I fell asleep, the train screeched to a halt and border agents slid open our door. No conversation occurred, as I knew the ritual from my last trip. They took my passport and left for an hour. They came back, and we crossed the border.

On the other side, the same thing happened. Ukrainian guards slid open the door, woke me up, and took my passport off the train again. I found it difficult to fall asleep after that because I still had an injured back from the week prior.

When the sun came up, I looked out to find fields of corn and grain. The landscape was rural and pastoral. The architecture in the villages was primitive and looked quaint yet comfortable. The sturdier buildings surrounding each train station were large and peculiar.

The train was confined to a single track—the others had been damaged by warfare—so we ended up delayed by an hour and a half. When we arrived in Kyiv, Mirali was waiting on the platform and helped me bring the luggage to the car. We met up with Yurii, their sourcing manager, whom I met in 2024. He drove us to the restaurant for breakfast and such.

We left for Bird’s Estate two days later. While we were on our way out of the city, there was a ballistic missile strike on a private defence industry and drone exhibition at a training ground in Kyiv. GPS was scrambled on the way to the estate, so we relied on old-fashioned map technology. The car’s screen showed us travelling through rivers, forests, and really anywhere we were not.

We made it there without much trouble, travelling through villages and farmland packed with sunflowers as far as the horizon. The roads narrowed into one-way paved roads, with apricots littering the ground. There were feral stone fruit trees, apple trees, quince, black currant, etc.

How did it feel cooking in a country at war, practically and emotionally? Were there air raid alerts during service, and what happened in the room?

There was a level of fear the first few nights I was there. Part of the introduction to the hotel was a quick tour of the underground bomb shelter and the adjoining movie theatre used for overflow. I knew the hotel from last time, and the staff is always friendly. It is quite a pleasant stay.

In Vytachiv, someone told me that when there are drone attacks, it is reminiscent of Star Wars. Star Wars, strangely, became a recurring theme of the trip.

I downloaded the Air Alert app on my phone this time. I woke up the first day to a lock screen completely filled with notifications from the app. It was jarring, but Mirali was reassuring throughout the stay. If there was a night when he anticipated a missile attack, he would give me a heads-up to stay in the shelter. I would get down there before the attack so I could get a cot before everyone else came down. This was great, but as soon as I fell asleep, people would barge in with flashlights and find their spots right next to me.

This is simply part of reality for the people who live in Ukraine, so any complaints I had were directed at the wrong audience. Air raid alerts were commonplace and happened often. They seemed to be entirely disregarded by everyone who lived there, and when I brought this up, the attitude was, “If it’s our time, so be it.” There is absolutely no change in the atmosphere when an alert is happening.

At Bird’s Estate, we heard jets fly over quite a few times. Everyone stopped and stared at the sky every time we heard a plane.

Walk me through the Vytachiv dinner dish by dish. What was on the table, in what order, and why those dishes for a rustic, family-style format?

This menu was simple and designed to allow people to eat communally.

The first round of dishes was deer tartare with a “mustard” made from carrot and heather flowers. It had Syrian cotton pods cooked in burnt-onion clarified butter, pumpkin seed oil, and smoked pickled guindilla peppers.

There were also large, fragrant stinging nettle leaves prepared in the style of bugak, with a batter made from Northern bayberry broth. These were served with a salted apricot emulsion, preserved mandarin peels, and Numex Suave peppers preserved in maple syrup. They were topped with coriander blossoms from the restaurant’s garden.

We also served tiny Thai green eggplants, grown for Mirali by a local farmer, pickled in a savoury, bacon-y solution and tossed with basil from his garden beds.

The next round included a bowl of black beans and goosefoot cooked in a broth made from almond aminos, helichrysum butter, and blue hyssop. There was an endive salad dressed with a sweet fern “drinking vinegar,” hazelnut, and large amounts of doe ham grated over the top.

We also served duck: legs cured and confit, and breast grilled on the crown over wood sage smoke. The dish was finished with braised prunes, a jus made from the bones and wood sage, and Scots pine and rhubarb root oil.

For dessert, we served a cake made from day-old sourdough and honey clover, soaked in smoked tea and citrus syrup. Apricots from California were preserved in a sugar extracted from New York roasted grains and legumes. It was finished with rose mallow flowers.

Now, the Kyiv tasting menu at Mirali, course by course. How different was it from what you’d serve in New York?

As I found out that certain things would not be able to be sourced while we were in the countryside, the menu changed considerably. The dishes came from the things I brought, ingredients that were recommended, and components prepared for the countryside event.

First course: A slice of heirloom tomato dressed with smoked tomato oil and seasoned with tomato salt. A jelly made from sweet fern drinking vinegar and a ton of katsuobushi brought from Japan. Ember-preserved tomato. Fried shallot, salted apricot emulsion, Numex Suave, and preserved mandarin peels. Garnished with coriander blossoms.

Second course: A salad made with rolled daikon and poached Swiss chard. Acorn jelly dressed with reduced tomato and beach rose honey. Arugula from the garden dressed with aromatised brown rice vinegar. Finished with phytoplankton and hickory nut oil.

Third course: 14-day-aged oscietra sturgeon, lightly cured and poached in yellow bud hickory nut oil, then glazed with a sauce made from sweet flag and burnweed macerated in Okinawa black sugar, prune, and pumpkin tamari. It was finished with spiced brown butter, bee pollen, salt-cured yucca flower, and salt-cured spicebush leaves. My favourite dish.

Fourth course: Deer wrapped with lardo, with hardy herbs sandwiched between the two. It was roasted and finished with Scots pine and rhubarb root oil. To serve: deeply caramelised onion, a medallion of grilled deer leg, a slice of doe ham à la violin, a bouquet of wild herbs from the property, and a slice of grilled lardo.

Fifth course: Quail stuffed with quail farce, cured, smoked, fried, and roasted. Confit king oyster mushroom and pickled giroles, lightly dressed in smoked tomato oil.

Sixth course: Various forms of warm Vacherin Fribourgeois. A marmalade made from green walnut wood and elderflower vinegar. Crisp, fried sourdough brunoise. Quince poached with smoked tea and chamomile. Finished with Queen Anne’s lace and a powder made from the elderflower vinegar lees and chamomile from the garden.

Seventh course: Apricot braised in sugar extracted from roasted grains. A white chocolate analog made from sea buckthorn and lavender. A cake made from old sourdough and melilot. Some of the grain syrup from the apricots.

This menu was different from the menu I planned to execute, let alone the menu I would serve in a restaurant in New York. The approach and sentiment were there, but I had to adapt to the lack of seafood in Ukraine—fishing in the Black Sea is off limits—and the smaller variety of ingredients.

This doesn’t mean I was not proud of our food. I just tend to use more interesting and less familiar ingredients when they are available.

What travelled with you in your luggage, and what did you source in Ukraine? Which Ukrainian ingredients or producers surprised you?

I brought around 70 kg of preserves to Kyiv: apricots, dried wild herbs and botanicals, white chocolate analog, infused vinegars, cured meat, Tetraselmis phytoplankton and hickory oil, smoked vegetables, ferments, and green woods.

I really liked the sturgeon and deer that Mirali brings in. The deer is tender yet flavorful; usually you get one or the other. The sturgeon is super clean and not muddy-tasting at all. Sturgeon is fairly uncommon in U.S. fine dining. It is a fish I will likely utilize more often.

The most surprising thing each time I go to Mirali’s restaurant is how well-stocked their preserves are. They have a larder stacked with ferments and preserves that, in my opinion, are much more thoughtfully produced than 90% of what I have seen in restaurants in the United States.

Mirali has a special way of showcasing produce and not letting anything go to waste. Specific cultivars that I thought were uncommon were available in Ukraine. I think this has to do with Mirali’s time in New York City.

Did you forage there? What grows in Ukraine that you don’t have at home, and did anything make it onto the plates?

I tried to forage despite the jet lag, the heat, and the work associated with the dinners while in the countryside. Here is a list:

Yellow sweet clover, white melilot, Scot’s pine, black currant, quince, elderflower, elderberry, sugar plum, white cascade apple, pears (not sure what type), sweet cherry, stinging nettle, purple wood sage, Syrian cotton aka milkweed flowers and pods, black horehound, rowanberry, white goosefoot, dandelion, kalina, Queen Anne’s lace, hop shoots, staghorn sumac, burdock, raspberry, rose mallow, cream scabious, chicory, mulberry, apricot—two types, one was smaller and wild—and red plums.

I did not use much on the menus but picked and ate as I scouted. White goosefoot, wood sage, Queen Anne’s lace, nettles, white melilot, and rose mallow made it onto the menu in Vytachiv.

Many of these items grow in other places I have been, but the sheer abundance of orchard fruit was incredible and something I have not seen anywhere else.

The apricot story: you carried California apricots preserved in a New York misutgaru-style syrup across four borders, then arrived in Vytachiv to find the roads covered in fallen apricots. What went through your head, and what ended up on the plate in each city?

I sourced apricots that I like from a farm in California and preserved them in a syrup made from grains and legumes harvested in New York. As we approached the estate, the dirt roads were filled with fallen apricots and the trees were bursting with them. There were two varietals available in abundance.

I thought it was funny that I went through all the effort to get apricots from California to New York to Warsaw to Chelm to Kyiv to Vytachiv, all while virtually immobile due to a back injury, only to find myself completely surrounded by them.

I knew something like this would happen. It happened with the melilot, rhubarb root, and green walnuts as well. If I had not brought these things, I am sure there would have been nothing. That’s kind of just part of the experience of foraging for your ingredients.

Which single dish from these two weeks are you proudest of, and which one taught you something you’ll keep?

The sturgeon dish from the dinners at Mirali was the most surprisingly delicious to me. I find myself dialing back the number of components on each dish and focusing solely on complementary flavors.

Any individual component may taste dull or incomplete, but when the ingredients are composed together, you find yourself pleasantly confused and fascinated by the nuances each flavor evokes from another. This comes from the five flavors philosophy. Each ingredient plays a role in the final composition.

Why Mirali? What is it about him and his restaurant that made you want to cook there rather than anywhere else in Kyiv?

Easy. Mirali is the best restaurant in Ukraine. Any other restaurant doing fine dining seems inspired by Instagram, and the rest of the great restaurants there are serving traditional fare. Mirali and I are aligned in our approach to cuisine.

Was there a guest, a comment, or a moment from those nights that will stay with you?

The greatest guest interaction I had was with an enthusiastic couple who were diplomats of some sort. I came by their table after the cheese course and asked what they thought. The woman was smiling ear to ear and emphatically told me how much she hated it. The man ate both portions.

I loved this for a few reasons, and it is an interaction I won’t forget. First, she was honest. Honest feedback helps me become a chef who can better cook for my audience, as opposed to cooking for myself.

Second, she loved how interesting and complex the dish was, but the cheese was too strong for her liking. She admired the dish in every way, and that was enough for her to enjoy the experience of displeasure. I am not sure I have ever had a diner so happy to hate something. I found it fascinating and inspiring.

What does cooking in Ukraine mean to you at this point, a few months before you test a decade of research in Korea?

A massive life lesson I have learned from my trips to Ukraine is how unified a group of people can be. They are such a strong group of people who have endured years of war and still find ways to support one another and strive to live a relatively normal life. The fluidity and organic nature of pop-ups can be challenging. Things go wrong. These challenges help you think on your toes, and I certainly do not have any concrete plans going into my dinner in Korea. Food is nature. Nature is always changing. It is best to consider each ingredient in its exact moment of ripeness and apply techniques and compositions based on the tangible characteristics you experience then and there. I plan on not planning (too much).

What about the Ukraine trip will you never forget?

There are a lot of negative things I can say about what has happened to the parts of Ukraine I have visited. They are going through a very difficult time, and it is evident.

That said, I will never forget how excited people are to see new faces, ingredients, and techniques—things from the outside that are only kept out because people don’t have the nerve to bring them in. We are so lucky to live in societies where these barriers are virtually nonexistent.

I have learned to be far more empathetic toward people who have it harder than we do but are strong enough not to abandon the place they call home.

Part Two: Mirali

For readers who have never been to Kyiv: what is Mirali, and what are you trying to build there?

Mirali is a fine-dining restaurant in Kyiv that opened just three months before the full-scale invasion. But first and foremost, Mirali is about people: the people who have continued to show up throughout the war and do the best work they possibly can.

We work closely with some of the best farmers and producers in Ukraine, and we try to give their work a voice through the restaurant. For us, food should be more than something we simply consume. It can be a way of understanding where we live: what grows here, who grows it, how people work with the land, and why all of that matters.

What we are trying to build with Mirali is a restaurant that can tell a story about contemporary Ukraine through its people, its ingredients, and the work behind them.

What does it mean, practically and emotionally, to run a restaurant of this level in a country at war? Why keep going?

It is a very difficult question, because emotionally I often feel caught between two completely different states. There are moments when I have no energy left and genuinely ask myself why I am still doing this. And then there are moments when the answer feels very clear: during the war, the most meaningful thing I can do is what I know how to do best.

I can cook. I can bring chefs from around the world to Ukraine. I can expose my team and our guests to what is happening in gastronomy outside the country. And I can refuse to give up.

I keep going because I believe there will be a day when this war ends, and we will celebrate it. I imagine celebrating that day together with all the chefs who came to Ukraine and cooked with us during these years.

And I believe the work we are doing now will not disappear. There is a new generation of Ukrainian chefs growing up and learning during this period, and I hope that what we are building at Mirali becomes part of their foundation. Our mission is not only to cook for people today. It is to develop chefs who will leave Mirali in the future and become some of the people representing Ukraine to the world.

Who sits in your dining room these days, and what does a dinner out mean to people living through this?

I don’t think we have one clearly defined audience anymore. The people in our dining room are very different, but there is something that connects many of them: they have chosen to continue living in the country they love.

They may be connected to the military, journalists, people working in business and the creative industries, entrepreneurs, foreigners, or expats who have decided to stay in Ukraine. They come from completely different worlds, but even under these circumstances, they have decided that they do not want to leave their home. Kyiv is where they belong.

And I think going out for dinner has a slightly different meaning now. It is not simply about eating or entertainment. It is a chance to have a few hours of normal life, to be around other people, to celebrate something, to talk, and to remember what we are protecting and why we continue living here.

How did you and Adam first connect, and what made you invite him to cook at Mirali?

Adam and I first connected online through our mutual friend Francisco, who was the chef at Fulgurances in New York at the time. Francisco knew that I was looking for international chefs who would be willing to come to Ukraine and cook at Mirali, so he spoke to Adam about it. Adam immediately said he was open to the idea, and that was our first connection.

There was also a nice link between us through Fulgurances. I had done my residency there in September 2022, and Adam cooked there later as well. So even before we met in person, we already had this shared point in our careers.

From that first conversation, it took around six months of planning to actually bring Adam to Kyiv. For me, the fact that he was willing to come to Ukraine in the middle of the war already said a lot about him. And of course, I was interested in his food and in bringing a completely different culinary perspective into our kitchen and sharing it with our team and our guests.

What surprised you about how he works, in the kitchen and outside it?

What impressed me most was the depth of Adam’s knowledge of ingredients, especially wild plants. There was something almost magical about walking through Kyiv with him and having him suddenly point at a plant growing around us and say, “You can eat this,” or explain why another one was interesting. His knowledge of wild plants is much deeper than mine, and I found that incredibly inspiring.

In the kitchen, I was struck by how precise and responsible he is with every dish. Nothing feels accidental. At the same time, you can clearly feel his deep connection to Korean cuisine and technique in the way he thinks about flavor. It is not a superficial influence; it has become part of his own language as a chef.

Outside the kitchen, what struck me was how humble and genuinely curious he is. He wants to discover things, understand new places and products, and learn from the people around him. Despite having such deep knowledge himself, he never approaches it with ego.

His food is built on wild American plants and Korean technique. How did your guests react to it? What did they make of the apricot dish?

I’m sure our guests loved it. For quite a few of them, it was actually their second time coming to one of Adam’s dinners, which I think says a lot.

I also decided to experience one of the dinners as a guest myself, because I really wanted the opportunity to taste Adam’s food properly rather than only seeing it from inside the kitchen.

What fascinated me was that there were so many flavors I had never experienced before, but at the same time, some of them somehow brought me back to very familiar tastes and memories from childhood. That contrast was what made the experience so interesting: something could feel completely new and unfamiliar, yet trigger a memory of something you have known your whole life.

Apricot itself is a very familiar ingredient for Ukrainians, so there was something immediately recognizable about that dish, and it was delicious. But personally, the dish that stayed with me most was the one with acorn and daikon. That combination gave me a completely new experience of flavor. It was something I had simply never tasted before.

Did you take him foraging or to producers? What did he get excited about?

During this visit, we didn’t go specifically to meet farmers or producers, but we spent the first part of the trip in the countryside, where one of the dinners took place. That gave us the opportunity to forage around the area.

It was fascinating for me because Adam kept finding plants and ingredients that I would never have imagined were edible. He sees a landscape differently. Where I might simply see plants growing on the side of the road, he sees ingredients and possibilities.

At one point, on the way back to Kyiv, he even asked the driver to stop the car because he had spotted some pine. He got out, collected the branches, brought them back with him, and later used them to make an oil.

Watching him in those moments was very funny and also very inspiring. He was like a little kid walking into a toy store, suddenly surrounded by all these new things he could discover and play with.

You are known for supporting young chefs and bringing international ones to Ukraine. Why does that exchange matter to you, especially now?

First of all, it gives our guests a chance to experience what is happening in gastronomy around the world without leaving Kyiv. The more different chefs, ideas and flavors they experience, the more open they become to something new.

But for me, the most important part is learning. There is no point at which you can say you know enough. Every chef who comes to Mirali teaches me something, whether it is a new flavor, a technique, a way of working with an ingredient, or simply a different way of thinking.

When two chefs with completely different experiences meet in the same kitchen, something new inevitably happens. I learn something from them, they discover something here, and both of us carry that experience forward into our own work.

That constant development and hunger for knowledge has driven me throughout my life, and it is one of the main reasons I continue inviting chefs to Ukraine. It is also incredibly important for the young cooks in our kitchen. They get to work side by side with chefs they might otherwise only know through books, restaurants or social media. And when the visiting chef leaves, some of that knowledge stays with the team. That is the real value of the exchange.

What did Adam’s visit leave behind in your kitchen?

There are two answers to that question.

The first is very practical: Adam introduced us to wild plants and ingredients that we had never worked with before, and probably would never have thought to look for ourselves. His knowledge comes from working with plants and culinary traditions from very different parts of the world, from America to Japan and Korea, and that changed the way we looked at some of the ingredients growing around us.

But the second, and much more important thing he left behind, was knowledge.

One of my strongest memories is from our first dinner in the countryside. Adam was talking to us about the plants he had found around the location, explaining what they were, how he recognized them and how he thought about using them. Those conversations stay with you. The dinner ends, the chef goes home, but the knowledge stays in the kitchen and becomes part of how the team thinks.

What do you want the world to understand about Ukrainian food? And who would you love to see cook at Mirali next?

What I want people to understand is that Ukrainian food does not begin and end with borscht, varenyky and syrnyky. Those dishes are part of our culture, and they are important, but Ukrainian gastronomy is much bigger than that.

For me, it begins with the people behind the ingredients: the farmers and producers who continue developing agriculture in this country even while living and working through war and missile attacks. They keep experimenting, growing new varieties and introducing new crops to Ukraine. That work is also Ukrainian gastronomy.

And then there is a new Ukrainian cuisine being created right now. What we are trying to do at Mirali is not simply reinterpret traditional recipes. We are trying to understand what contemporary Ukrainian cuisine can become.

In many ways, this is a cuisine being born through struggle. It is being shaped by people fighting for the possibility of having a future here. That is why it is so important for us not to stop.

I want the world to know that Ukraine has talented chefs, cooks, farmers, producers and restaurants that want not only to survive, but to grow, create and become part of the international gastronomic conversation. And right now, having the world engage with us, visit us and support that development matters enormously.

At the beginning of the full-scale war, I honestly didn’t think anyone would come to Ukraine. Now, every year, as more talented chefs and restaurants agree to come and cook with us, I allow myself to dream bigger.

My goal is to bring around ten to twelve international chefs to Ukraine every year. I don’t want these collaborations to feel like isolated special events. I want this exchange to become a permanent part of what we do at Mirali and of what our guests and our young cooks can experience in Kyiv.

We already have four pop-ups confirmed for this year, including chefs and restaurants from Berlin, London, Lyon and Dublin. The fact that restaurants at this level, including Michelin-starred restaurants, are willing to come to Ukraine today would have been almost impossible for me to imagine at the beginning of the war.

But I’m already thinking about next year. One person I would especially love to bring to Ukraine is Matt Orlando, the chef I staged with years ago. I would also love to have Adam back once he has opened his own restaurant. And there are many more chefs I admire whose names I haven’t mentioned yet. I hope some of them will eventually find their way to Kyiv.

I am particularly interested in bringing chefs who have experienced some kind of turbulence or difficult period in their own lives and careers. People who understand what it means to keep building when circumstances are against you, how to guide a restaurant through difficult times, and how not to give up. I think that kind of experience can teach our young chefs something that goes far beyond cooking.

Andreja Lajh is the founder of Haut de Gamme, a London-based PR agency working with chefs, restaurants and food producers worldwide. She writes about food, wine and the restaurant world at hautdegamme.net.

Adam Lawrence is a client of Haut de Gamme. Journalists who would like to interview Adam, cover his October dinner in Seoul, or reach Dilbazi Mirali in Kyiv, write to me at andreja.lajh@hautdegamme.net.