A story of coffee, war and survival

Outside the ‘Lybly Kavy’ coffee shop in Odesa, there’s a black bench. A bench that’s been to hell and back. A bench that like Ukraine, is battered but still standing strong.

Outside Kostya Tovstakoriy’s small coffee shop, in a narrow cobbled street behind the Odesa opera house, there’s a solid looking black bench. In the old days, the days before the war, it stood outside one of his cafes in Kherson: couples sat on it and took selfies together drinking coffee. Kostya scrolls through his camera to show me some of these happy photos, which they used to repost on their Instagram, before telling me another, much darker story about the bench. “The city was occupied, and my coffee shop was right next to a position where there were many Russian soldiers. And it was hit by a Ukrainian HIMARS missile. All the windows and door to my shop were blown out, but my bench was left standing. It survived. And so we brought it here.” The bench is battered, but still standing: it seems like an actual real life metaphor for Ukrainian resilience.

The Kherson bench in happier times

Kostya first opened I Love Coffee in Kherson back in 2015, one of the first third wave coffee shops in the city: it proved very popular - after two years he opened a second shop and a year later, a third. Business was good, they were well respected and featured in all the coffee guides. But then came the day when for all Ukrainians, everything changed, and life turned completely upside down. On 24th February 2022, Kostya closed the doors to his shops; there was no reason to be selling coffee when a war had begun. Russian forces swept into Kherson, occupying the city and the surrounding region, imposing a terrifying new reality on its residents. Kostya spent two months living under occupation, avoiding the main streets as much as he could. “I moved like this in the city, in small side streets just hiding from the Russians because you never knew what they were going to do.”

Then he and his family managed to escape.  “We were lucky, we made it out in just one day - we left at five in the morning and by five in the evening we had got to Mykolaiv (just over 40 miles away), so it was really fast. I know that a couple of months later some friends who tried to go the same way said they had to spend 3 days on the road.”

The road to Kherson

By November 2022 Ukrainian troops had managed to liberate a large swathe of Kherson oblast along the right bank of the Dnipro river, including the city itself: there were incredible scenes of jubilation as Ukrainian soldiers entered the city, embracing residents who rushed out to greet them with flags and bunches of flowers. Yet it wasn’t long before the Russian troops who had fled across the river began pounding the city and nearby villages relentlessly with artillery and air guided bombs. From heaven to hell, as one headline put it. And in the area of the city closest to the river by the bridge, the area visible from Russian positions on the other side, it is especially hellish. Kostya’s shops ended up in a danger zone. “Nowadays in Kherson many people have moved to the more northern areas or the north of the territory, they try to get far from the river, far from where the Russians are - but my coffee shops are closer to the centre.” Remarkably, he’s kept one shop open. Two of his employees wanted to stay and carry on working. “I don’t make any money, it’s my own money which I use on keeping them working, just so my baristas have jobs. If they want to keep working and I’m able to spend extra for it - why not?”

Excellent coffee in Odesa

First he went to Kyiv - during the energy blackouts which made running a business incredibly challenging. He managed to adapt, serving coffee out of thermoses, making food which didn’t need refrigeration and saving up for a generator. Now he’s working hard to make the coffee shop business a success in Odesa, which has its own challenges. “A lot of people think it’s easy. I mean you don’t have to know a lot of stuff. But the difference between a cool coffee shop, a successful one and not successful, is very small. Even if you have a lot of experience, you can take a wrong decision. Especially if you don’t know the city. Kherson and Odesa might seem similar- but people behave differently.” His new place is on a small side street and in pre-war Kherson, he says, that wouldn’t have been an issue. Perhaps in Odesa it’s more tricky to entice people away from the main drag. “But in summer it’ll be better with more people outside”.

And they are busy thinking up new pastries, a bigger range of cakes: “we are trying out some new stuff, getting ready for the spring and the summer season - and we make everything in house, we are not outsourcing anything. We make what we want on the day.” On the days I stopped by, I bought an perfectly squidgy brownie, a slice of French style custard flan and some very good chocolate basque cheesecake - while the coffee, as you’d expect, was excellent.

Kostya and the bench that survives!

Kostya has always been known as an innovator in coffee culture - someone who pushed the boundaries which others followed. So even in these times when every Ukrainian lives for today, because who knows if there will even be a tomorrow - there are plans for the future. And the bench outside, which has been to hell and back, is still there, still standing strong.