WASHINGTON, D.C. — If your family comes from anywhere in the former Soviet Union, you might be cooking up a traditional feast for New Year's Eve. It's a throwback to the anti-religious Soviet era, when Christmas was canceled and replaced by New Year's.
"It's still, for many, the big holiday," says food writer Polina Chesnakova, who moved to the U.S. when the Soviet Union collapsed and grew up in a community of Soviet refugees.
Classic dishes include shuba, known as herring under a fur coat, and Olivier salad, a Russian potato salad. Both star mayonnaise, the industrial condiment that disguised the sparse, bland ingredients available in the Soviet era.
Today, though, many Ukrainians are stepping away from the Soviet shadow and all that mayonnaise — and emphasizing Christmas over New Year's, by rediscovering traditional holiday dishes.
"A lot of Ukrainian chefs discover our old culture and we try [to] renew our rich culture," says Mykola Yudin, head chef at Ruta, a Ukrainian restaurant in Washington, D.C.
A centerpiece of the Ukrainian Christmas table is kutia, a sweet, warm porridge of pearled barley mixed with berries, nuts and stewed dried fruit.
Mixed into the kutia porridge is uzvar, a punch of boiled dried fruits. It's also a drink you serve separately with the meal.
"It's an old recipe of my grandmother," Yudin says.
Yudin, 36, grew up in Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine. When pro-Russian separatists captured the region in 2014, he moved to the capital Kyiv, where he worked in restaurants. When Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, he fled again, to the U.S.
This year he represented Ukraine at a culinary competition of embassies in the U.S. His black currant liqueur won the award for best beverage.
He has read books about Ukrainian cuisine from hundreds of years ago, and was amazed to discover natural ingredients Ukrainians used before the Soviet era — from almond flour to vanilla.
He and restaurant manager Anastasiia Briukh, who also fled Ukraine when war broke out in 2022, sent their families back home in Ukraine money to buy power banks — because Russian attacks this Christmas season have knocked out electricity.
Ukraine's president has been holding talks with President Trump on a peace proposal — including a proposed compromise on territory in eastern Ukraine where Yudin, the chef, is from.
"Ukrainians are always open for compromises," Yudin says, through an interpreter. "We value our culture and our territory a lot, but the most important part is our people."
As a new year nears, they are far away from their families in Ukraine, but they celebrate food that tastes like home.
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