Yuri Priemskiy, born in 1978, wanted to be a footballer, learned Japanese and Italian cooking in Italy and worked in London before coming home to Kyiv, where he is chef of the Odessa restaurant.
My name is Yuri Priemskiy. I was born in 1978, in the Soviet Union. I have worked in my profession since I was 17, and for the last eighteen years I have been a chef. My path was long and hard, but at the same time I always enjoyed what I do. I’ll tell you everything in order.
First I studied at a culinary school for four years. Then I worked for some years in a well-known restaurant chain, where they noticed my skills and invited me to work in a new Japanese restaurant that was opening in Italy.
There I gained enormous experience. I cooked Japanese food, but I was also interested in the local cuisine. In my spare time I traveled around the country, took lessons from local cooks and learned to cook Italian food very well.
After Italy I went to Russia, then I worked in England, in London, and after that I came back to Kyiv. Home is home.
As a child I dreamed of becoming a footballer. I played a lot and took part in competitions, so my marks at school were bad. To make up for it, I helped my mother cook, and I was especially good at baking. When the time came to choose what to do after school, I chose the kitchen. Now I play football in my free time.
Working as a cook, I began to understand that I didn’t want just to cook from standard recipes. I wanted to invent new dishes. I set myself a goal: to develop a new recipe every day, for myself and for practice. Thanks to this I developed my sense of taste and gained priceless experience.
I treat the kitchen as a laboratory. Food is emotion; it is the last legal “drug” in the world. You either get pleasure from it or you don’t. That is why people always need to be surprised.
My goal is to open my own restaurant. I already understand what it should be like and how to develop it the right way. For now I am training here, at Odessa. I consider this restaurant mine too; it feels like home. And the most important thing is that here they gave me freedom.
My main hobby is my family. I also like going to the theater, I collect cookbooks and masks, and I play football and swim.
For the photo I made a pâté shaped like a mandarin. It is made from three kinds of liver, with a lot of cream and butter added so that the pâté is creamy. For me it is the ideal taste: pâté together with mandarin and black bread.
