"There is no better way to convey love than through good food" — American chef prepares borshch for locals in Borodyanka
"My parents raised me like this: if there is a bully, you go up to him and break his nose. You cannot allow someone to bully others. The values of our team are based on respect and trust. If someone says something bad to my people, I'll get out of the van," the man swats a bug that has ventured into the camp kitchen. His colleagues jerk in surprise. "And if there's a problem, I solve it right away.”
This is 36-year-old American chef Noah Sims, originally from Epsworth, Georgia. He was a participant of MasterChef U.S., cooked in the Bahamas after Hurricane Dorian, and volunteered in many parts of India.
In March 2022, Noah went to cook for Ukrainians in Poland and is now working in Kyiv Oblast. His Polish team of volunteers came to Ukraine with him.
We meet with the chef in Borodyanka, Kyiv Oblast. The chefs have come here for the first time. They will cook four cauldrons of borshch and Neapolitan pizza for the locals.
Noah has long hair and a loud voice. He keeps his hat and sunglasses on, even in cloudy weather. While his colleagues are setting up the stoves and putting 50-liter cauldrons on them, he is keeping an eye on the whole process.
"Sam, how are we doing, buddy?" he asks.
"In progress!" Sam replies. He used to study at a university in the Netherlands but dropped out to volunteer. "Even though I look like an axe murderer.” His hands are maroon with fresh beets.
"It's great! We're doing great!" Noah shouts from a nearby van.
Black volunteer vans are parked on Shevchenko Square. A local food market is held there every Thursday. Traders set up stalls around the bust of Ukrainian bard Taras ShevchenkoKobzar, who was shot in the head by the Russians during the occupation.
Noah and I go to scout the market for beans for borshch. He quickly walks around the three dozen food stalls, but doesn't find any beans. A vendor calls out to him from the other end of the market. He pours chacha and moonshine into two plastic cups for them to try. They drink with the words "Glory to Ukraine!".
"This stuff can kill me," Noah laughs, tossing off his cup. He asks us to tell the local man who he is and where he is from. After digesting some things I said — albeit not everything — he gives Noah both bottles for free.
Parents were proud that Ukraine rebelled against ‘Soviets’
"I first heard about Ukraine in 1991. Our teacher Mrs. Kemble told us about it in elementary school," Noah says on the way to the field kitchen.
He remembers that his parents were proud when "Ukraine rose up against the Soviets." He also knows that many strong women around the world are from Ukraine. His mother has always been interested in women's rights.
When the full-scale Russian invasion began, he realized that people from abroad should do more for Ukraine. So he decided to go to Poland. He sent a video message to his friends there about what he could do and how he would be useful. In March 2022, he flew to Rzeszów with his 72-year-old father. At first, they cooked at a hotel for displaced people, and in April Noah joined a not-for-profit non-governmental organization devoted to providing meals in the wake of natural disastersWorld Central Kitchen.
Fond of dumplings with sauerkraut
"I came to the WCK kitchen and said, 'I'm here to take out the garbage and wash the dishes. In a few days, I was in the top three for cold dishes, and by the end of the month, I was in charge of the kitchen," Noah recalls his progress.
His passion is to optimize processes. When he started, the volunteers were making 356 sandwiches per hour, and when he finished his part of the work there, they were making ten times as many. Although the number of people remained the same.
In June, Sims came to Poland for the fifth time. He was invited to be the executive chef of WCK's largest operational kitchen in Europe.
"For two months, I was the first to arrive at work and the last to leave, even when I broke my leg in the kitchen," he continues.
According to Noah, he had been suffering from depression and anxiety for over 10 years. He could not understand why this was happening. But volunteering in Poland healed him. It helped him to focus and realize what he could do best.
He came to Ukraine for the first time in the summer of 2022: in Lviv, he distributed toys to children. He was fascinated by Ukrainian cuisine, especially the dumplings with sauerkraut.
First air raid alert experience in a mall
"The first air raid alert caught me in a shopping center in Lviv. I heard: beep, beep, beep. ‘Please leave the building, you are under missile attack, you are under missile attack’. I thought, well, we definitely don't have something like that in the United States. But I knew where I was going. And I feel that I am not destined to die in Ukraine," Noah recalls.
That's when he decided that if the war continued, he would visit the de-occupied territories for the winter holidays. He spent Christmas and New Year's Eve volunteering in Kyiv Oblast: cooking borshch, talking to people, and trying to create a holiday for them.
"There's no better way to show love to someone you've never met than through good food," Noah believes.
He learned how to cook borshch in Poland, following the recipes of Ukrainian chefs. When he came to Ukraine, he immersed himself in the regional cuisine. He researches this Ukrainian dish, and wants to understand what is added to it in different regions.
A woman with a three-year-old girl passes by. The child in a pink jacket is running around, babbling.
"Ukrainian children are so cute!" says Noah. Then he shouts to the woman in English: "She's so cute!"
"When I walk through the streets of destroyed towns, I think: I'm happy to see these people, to say 'Dobryi den' to them," Noah knows how to say hello in Ukrainian.
He walks to the vans. Sam is finishing cooking borshch: the cooks have three-day-old infused borshch in one cauldron and fresh borshch in the other. Inside the center van, Julia from California keeps two more cauldrons of the dish on the stove.
Five servings feed the whole family
Around 1 p.m., the food is ready. Next to the van, the volunteers set up a camping stove where they cook Neapolitan pizza. The line for the pizza is twice as long as for the borshch.
Music is playing. People came with containers, asking for five servings for the whole family. Among them is the man who treated the American to moonshine.
Noah shouts from time to time: "Borshch, borshch, borshch!", "Pizza, pizza, pizza!"
An elderly woman has been waiting in line for borshch since the morning. Her apartment, like many other residents, has shattered windows from Russian mortar attacks, and many of her neighbors and their children were killed under the rubble.
Life has returned to the town. However, most residents lost their jobs and homes. They are grateful for the help of volunteers.
Before the full-scale war, Borodyanka was home to about 13,000 people. Now it's down to 8,000, half of whom returned after the de-occupation. At that time, rescuers found 41 dead under the debris of buildings, and more than 300 bodies were found in mass graves. In total, a year after the full-scale invasion, law enforcement officers found the bodies of 1,373 people in Kyiv Oblast, and another 278 people are still missing.
According to a study by the KSE Institute, Russians destroyed and damaged 1,534 buildings in Borodyanka, most of them residential.
Author: Lilia Zaretska