Sergei Ponomariov, chef at Prague Restaurant in Kyiv, has spent 20 years in the restaurant business, starting at 15 in a pioneer camp kitchen. He believes in minimalism and simple local products.
I turned 36 just today, so you've caught me on my birthday. I have been working in the restaurant business for 20 years.
As a child I dreamed of being a sailor and went to the Young Sailor Club. But I never studied for it, because I couldn't find a maritime college in Kyiv.
My father advised me to train as a cook. I enrolled in a training school and liked it a lot. I was the best student in my year, and right after my exams I started working at a young pioneer camp when I was only 15.
A pioneer camp is a very good place to learn. We had to do everything ourselves, from breaking down carcasses to baking.
Then I fulfilled my dream of becoming a sailor: first I worked as a cook on a barge, and later on a pleasure boat on the Dnipro. After that I served in the army, where I kept on cooking.
I went to university and studied at the faculty of hotel and catering business. Higher education is much more effective when you already have a lot of work experience than when you arrive straight from school. You manage to grasp the essence and combine it with your experience.
After graduating, I came to Odesa, where I was invited to become chef at Steakhouse. That is where my story as a chef begins. It was a very difficult period of my life, and I wanted to change my profession.
But at some point I realized that I liked being a chef, and I decided to become one of the best in my field. I read a lot, talked with other cooks and attended trainings. We didn't use the Internet back then, so we could get information only from books and, occasionally, from newspaper articles.
From Odesa I went back to Kyiv and worked there for a year. Then I was invited back to Odesa, to Kompot.
I travel around Ukraine a lot, because I'm invited as a consultant to organize the work process in kitchens. Very often future restaurateurs build huge, posh restaurants but pay no attention to the kitchen itself. Sometimes things are so bad that it is impossible to fix them.
What I like about my job is that it is creative. The hardest thing is to make ordinary food tasty and beautiful. I don't like cooking complicated dishes, because only minimalism and simple local products can make a dish sparkle. Pasta in Italy and pasta in Ukraine are two completely different dishes.
I don't start cooking until I can see the place I'm cooking for, because food is prepared according to the atmosphere. No one will eat fine-dining dishes sitting on a creaky wooden country chair, and vice versa.
A cook must travel, because only then can he understand the particularities of a national cuisine. It was only after I went to Italy that I understood what olive oil is, how they cook there, and how ravioli made in Italy differ from ravioli made in Ukraine.
In Ukraine, people are not ready to pay for the food alone. Here people pay for a whole set of things: the interior, the plates and the rest of the setting. In Europe, on the contrary, people understand that a dish was prepared by at least ten people, and that's why it costs a lot.
My favorite cuisine is Italian, and I like pasta and meat. At home, I like homemade food.
My hobby is sailing. I also like working with wood and carving things, and I enjoy reading cookbooks and learning something new.
The dish in the picture is interesting because it works like a construction kit. It has three separate components, tuna, tomato and avocado, and you can combine them to your taste. You can make it spicier or richer and more sour, or soften everything with avocado. That's why you can enjoy this dish in any mood.
