I’ve been in deep appreciation the past few days of the enormous weight that’s been lifted off my shoulders by the funds everyone contributed towards us buying an oven. It’s still a budget oven, but one that I hope can catapult us towards even bigger and better ovens. And most importantly, it enables me to bake boradinsky rye bread and my grandmothers’ honey cake (medovik). These are two spiritually important slavic staples that the menu would just not be complete without.

I could opine about how it can be quite hard to ask people for money, but everyone who contributed so generously and so quickly after we launched our fundraiser unraveled my fears about making such a request. We met our goal within 24 hours of me posting to instagram, and have had a few more donations trickle in, which has brought us close to $6,000. I am in awe.

And so incredibly grateful. It is such a gift to receive such generosity. Thank you to everyone who has cheered us on.

As for the boradinsky rye bread and medovik, I’d like to give each of these a moment of recognition, too.

Well, as much as I had hoped for this venture to be completely self-funded, I have hit what seems to be the inevitable “we are so close to opening but things are still costing so much money” wall.

A bit about how we got here. My parents immigrated to the US with basically no money nor any intergenerational wealth (the soviet union did away with all that). They worked very hard to build financial security. We lived pretty sparsely for the first six years of my life, but my parents saved aggressively, and eventually they were able to afford to build a house, and we moved to the suburbs of Worcester, MA. From there on, we lived a comfortable upper-middle-class life. I didn’t fulfill my dad’s dream for me to go to Harvard, but I did get to go to NYU, which was my dream after I learned about their Food Studies program. I worked as a barista and at a butcher shop in college, which helped a bit with paying for food and beer, but not much in the way of paying for sending your kid to school in New York. My parents worked so hard to set me up to take advantage of the opportunity to pursue a higher eduction. My parents paid for college, and off I went, post-graduation, incredibly lucky and privelaged to be debt-free, and ready and willing to make not very much money working at non-profits for the next 9 years.

Ok so that was more than a bit about how we got here. Maybe I’m oversharing but I like the idea of us all being straight up about how we all got to where we are cuz it’s just the way it is and those are called facts, baby.

Well folks, it’s crunch time over here. And I don’t mean the fun kind of crunch time involving pickles (although we are working towards that). I mean the crunch time that involves many emails back and forth and calls to the safety and permits department. The crunch time that is inducing anxiety because I may have been too proactive timing-wise in applying for my liquor license?? The crunch time that now has me taking magnesium and zinc every night before I go to sleep. We’re a little over a month out from when I would like to be able to open our doors, and if I’ve learned anything in the past few months since starting this process, a month goes by QUICKLY.

In general, things are looking good, I think. The space looks more like a restaurant every day. My friend Joelle started doing some painting in the space, which I am EXTREMELY excited about. It is so beautiful. I can’t wait for you to see. We’re still in an endless cycle of cleaning. I’ve also traveled very far up a decision tree regarding my oven situation, which I’m too far up now to be able to see the right way to climb back down. I think there’s a way I might only have to spend a handful of hundreds of more dollars to have a usable oven (big shout out to Aaron of Drift Inn Diner for coming through with the oven knowledge and research and possible solution), but, there is also still a chance I have to spring for a new oven that will cost me $4000. Stay tuned. Every day is a grand adventure of finding out what new thing will emerge that costs so much money.

Hello friends!

I absconded to NYC for a few days this week for a much-needed break from the endless march of restaurant-opening tasks. The catalyst for the trip was a wedding between two of James’ friends, and thank goodness for that because I might never have otherwise entertained a trip that took me away from restaurant things for four days. And while I could have probably negotiated myself out of going after I asked if I could join, this also felt like my last opportunity for a break before entering the last stretch before opening, and then, opening!

I usually have a list of NYC must-dos and mini-pilgrimages (russian turkish baths in the east village, Brighton Beach, B&H Dairy, bagels, eat as many eastern european things as possible, etc), which bring me great joy but also risk becoming an additional task list when I’m supposed to be "relaxing” and not making lists. So, I committed to a mindset of “chilling” and “going with the flow,” with the only priorities being seeing friends and having a nice time walking and reading books with my man.

From Alice

Have you ever found a cool neighborhood spot that you loved from the first time you walked in? Maybe it was something about the way the light streamed in at a certain time of the day, or the way you felt when you first walked in, maybe a smell reminded you of something you forgot a long time ago, or you somehow saw yourself fitting into the space in one way or another. You started going there alone at first, tentatively relaxing and letting yourself trust that good gut feeling. Shy at first, you become a regular staple there over time. You learn everyone’s names, you ask about their lives, their families, their pets. You see people through tough times, good times, and every day boring times and they see you in yours. You become enveloped in an ecosystem so much so that it’s hard for you to remember a time outside this space. Instead of fitting into that space you first saw yourself in, the space now fits around you. You become ingrained in this tiny world, and the tiny world becomes ingrained in you. You cannot imagine a time before this not-so-accidental community, but this time did exist. Without actually acting on that adventurous thought, that random pulse of free will that led you through the doors of your favorite neighborhood establishment for the first time, you would not be the person you are today.

Immigrant stories are both divisively unique yet also uniquely unifying. Both of our parents left their home country behind to try to find something better somewhere out there in the world at large. They landed in North America, having a somewhat limited knowledge of the culture, not to mention the language. This is not a particularly unique position to find oneself in. According to the UN, in 2024 there were about 304 million people who migrated away from the country they were born in. The United States holds 52.4 million of them, that’s approximately one out of every 7th person you meet out there. 

The last two weeks have been a blur of many items getting checked off the list, and as is customary, new items getting added to the list. Three steps forward, and then realizing you still have two more steps to get to where you already hoped to be.

An enormous part of that progress is all the help we’ve gotten along the way. Antonia built and installed custom shelves for us, with the help of her co-worker Keith. This is a big step towards having resting places for our wide assortment of tchotchkes.

From Alice, on memories -

The yellow brick house with the green metal gate. The squeak of the hinges and the unmistakable metal clang of the latch always stirred excitement. Someone has come to visit or dedushka Kolya was back from the market. 

Progress is not linear. Alice said this once, right around when we started pulling up the unfortunate tile in the kitchen, and it has been reverberating in my head ever since. I’m not sure a sentence has ever felt more true as we ricochet back and forth between projects. Not one thing feels fully complete yet, which is a troublesome state to be in as someone who derives deep satisfaction and some semblance of peace in being able to at least check something fully off the list. And yet! Despite the list not getting shorter and possibly getting longer somehow, progress is being made!

For example, the kitchen used to look like this:

Alice and I were connected through a mutual friend, as happens a million times over in New Orleans every minute, (shout out Olga). Our first meeting was at Old Road coffee to see Olia Hercules, an accomplished Ukrainian cookbook author and activist, speak about her new memoir (Strong Roots, it is sad and beautiful, you should read it) and continued activism to bring attention to Putin’s war in Ukraine. Olia was serendipitously in New Orleans for a few days, and I had just put down a deposit to go on a culinary tour to Georgia with her and her travel partner, Nataliya, so it all really felt like one of those stars aligning moments that also happen a million times over in New Orleans every minute.

Alice and I hit it off, reciting our origin stories to each other. Alice immigrated with her parents to Canada in 1998 (when she was 7 years old), 7 years after the Soviet Union collapsed. She often jokes that she was born in a country that no longer exists, but this is true, as jokes often are. When she and her mom tried to establish Alice’s dual citizenship, Russia said, “sorry, but because your birth certificate was technically issued by a government and country that no longer exist we can’t do that, and we don’t feel like figuring it out”. In 2005, she and her mom moved from Ottawa to L.A.and re-started continuing to build their lives.

Hello Friends,

You may have heard by now that Dom Zakuski has found a permanent home and is going to be a full-fledged restaurant. This is thrilling! I am thrilled. I am also nervous! But mainly, I am thrilled. Each day is filled with new tasks and new things to figure out and with that, new knowledge, and these all happen to be things I love.

These days filled with tasks and the-figuring out-of-things move me closer to the opening of our doors, and yet, despite feeling like important progress is taking place, opening day still feels remarkably far away. Imagine moving forward towards a tiny dot on the horizon that is your destination, and despite the fact that you feel your body moving forward, the dot doesn’t seem to get all that much bigger. That’s what it feels like right now.