Oleg Pashkevich

I’m 28. I was working as a barman in a restaurant, when the Japanese cuisine became popular in our country. I decided I wanted to make classy sushi and went to Kiev, where I became an apprentice of a Japanese sushi master Yoshi.

My apprenticeship reminded Hollywood thrillers of 1990s, where the main protagonist goes to a guru of martial arts in the heart of Tibet. But My Tibet was in Kiev.

I was given a Japanese knife Yanagi-ba and had to cut big Daikon (Japanese radish) in slices as thick as rice paper. If failed to do it well, I was bitten with a spatula used to fry tamago.

After my apprenticeship at Yoshi’s I came back to Odessa, where I improved my skills at different Japanese outlets.

I’ve been working at Sushi360 since it was open. Managers offered me to become chef and I’m very grateful for this. I really liked the concept of Kaiten-restaurant. This is the first restaurant of this kind in Odessa, and the second in Ukraine. Here, as in many restaurants in Japan and in the world, you can eat freshly made sushi.
As it happens in Odessa, I – a Japanese cuisine master, inhabitant of Odessa with Jewish roots and typical Russian face – study Torah. And I follow its laws in all my activities.

That’s why I work only with natural products, without food preservatives and food colouring according to Kashrut.

I love Thai and Japanese cuisine. And of course our own Odessa cuisine. I like stuffed fish and forshmak.
As for my interests, they are work and synagogue. I don’t have time for other things. I also like to invent and to serve them to guests.

The dish roll with tempura shrimp in wasabi sesame with pineapple, avocado and pepper salsa I’ve invented just this week. It’s an interesting combination of Spanish salsa, Japanese roll and another Japanese dish – shrimp tempura and sesame with wasabi taste.