Art on the plate - meeting one of Odesa’s most exciting chefs

Aleksander Yourz has a background in hip hop and graffiti art - and he brings that aesthetic to his food.

Odesa is a special city: it will always have a place in my heart. I have often caught myself browsing through real estate ads, searching for the perfect one bedroom flat in Prymorski - or would I rather be closer to Shevchenko park? A large part of my love for Odesa is down to the food. Obviously also the people who make it, but really, it is the food. I am in the process of being educated by my amazing friend Maria Kalenska, who is midway through writing a beautiful and definitive book about Odesan food culture and heritage. And I am always inspired by meeting some of the city’s brightest young chefs, who are really pushing boundaries with modern Odesan and Ukrainian food. 

One of the most exciting professional cooks is Aleksander Yourz, who runs two bistro restaurants in the city. Finding his original place, Yourz Space Bistro, involves going on a slight adventure: you walk down a passageway into a yard and then look for a small buzzer next to a large iron gate outside a modern block of flats. Inside, the place is decorated in a riot of colour, an echo of Aleksander’s background in hip hop and graffiti art. He has brought this aesthetic to the food, too: on my first visit there almost two years ago, we ordered his version of the classic Odesa Jewish chopped herring dish, Forshmak. He carried it to the table himself, lifting off the lid of a metal tin branded with the restaurant’s logo, and setting down an individual loaf of challah bread alongside. A mushroom pasta dish was anything but ordinary, a tangle of handmade noodles with a rich mushroom and parmesan sauce aerated by a syphon. His take on the old fashioned waffle cake dessert contained neither waffle nor cake: instead a bowl of ice cream arrived, scattered with shards of crunchy feuilletine, and a pool of rich dulce de leche sauce. “I started painting graffiti art when I was about nine or ten years old” he said. “Then I got involved in DJ-ing and making all kinds of music from rap to hiphop. I tried to use that creativity as inspiration when I began work in the kitchen. When I came back to Odesa and began working as a chef in a place called Bernadazzi, I began trying to bring that same creativity to the plate. I began experimenting with my team, so it was a great time for me, taking things from art and music and using them in my food.” 

Forshmak and challah

Of course everything was turned upside down in February 2022. For the first few months of the full scale war, restaurants simply closed their doors: the city centre was ringed by tank traps, the coast lined by sandbags. Like many chefs, Aleksander began cooking meals for soldiers and displaced families. “When we started to live our life in wartime, for the first two or three months we cooked hot food for people, 1000 dishes a day. The day that we managed to reopen the restaurant, I remember, we had a lot of guests and we were so happy and proud to cook our menu for people who wanted to come and eat with us. The very next day there was a rocket attack and nobody came in at all: this is our life nowadays”, Aleksander said. “So we start to live from day to day, we can’t really plan anything interesting because we don’t know what will happen the next day. But this is life. It is still really important to continue creating something, because when you stop, your life stops also.” 

Once Odesa began opening up again, crowds gathering on Deribasivska street in the evenings, the cafes and restaurants coming back to life, Aleksander was determined to keep building his business. “I decided to open a second restaurant even though it was in the middle of a war. I really love Asian flavours so I decided to open Yourz Asian Bar, right in the middle of Odesa, we wanted a small place where we could create Asian dishes in my style. Building it was really difficult because there was no light or power - and it was really stressful. But we made it - and now we work, and we keep on going forward.” 

He is constantly inspired by the fresh produce which is available by the season, especially in Odesa’s vibrant food markets which he visits whenever he can. “When the war started we didn’t often go to markets. Yesterday I went to Noviy Rynok,  to check out ingredients there. I used to go every week although now we have a buyer who understands the quality we need. He brings the produce to the restaurant and I create something depending on what is available.” Nowadays, he explained, he uses around 60% of local ingredients and 40% from elsewhere. And he’s tailored his current offering to the challenging times. “For me it's important to have good quality ingredients, and not to create some kind of high gastronomy but dishes which people understand. Nowadays we need to be cooking dishes for every day, not for one month, or a special holiday - something which is interesting but which people understand.”

Next level syrniki!

Aleksander described himself as a fanatic about Odesan gastronomy. “You come to Pryvoz market and you see things from this region, like tulka fish and other special things, and I love to see the way older people cook traditional recipes. But we try to turn them into something new”. The ‘everything old is new again’ philosophy, coming to life on the plate. On another visit to Yourz Space, I tried his take on syrniki, my favourite curd cheese pancakes. They were pushed up a gear by incorporating a molten centre of condensed milk, which flooded out when you cut in. There were blueberries and puddles of sour cream and caramel sauce, a delicious brunch which should come with a recommendation to take a long nap immediately afterwards. I asked for details about his version of Forshmak. “Our recipe is not classic, it is a little bit French. We take Maatjes herring and turn it into a mousse, then we add in some chopped anchovy. We don’t use onion and apple, so it ends up really tasting of the fish. On top, we add some herring caviar and green onion, and some butter - and we serve it with our homemade challah rolls. For us in Odesa, forshmak is as special as black caviar - so that’s why we serve it in special tins with our logo.”

He talked of the need to push a new generation of cooks and hospitality workers, and teaching young people to become highly trained professionals.  “When I opened my own place I thought if chefs want to really grow in Ukraine they need to take responsibility for restaurants themselves. We can do more for the country this way, and I look forward to seeing more of it”.

Not your usual waffle cake!