A table for… Olia Hercules

Illustration by Lyndon Hayes

Her parents eventually fled Kakhovka and travelled to a house owned by her brother, in Italy. Hercules went out to meet them. To prepare for their arrival, she visited a local supermarket. “On a normal day, I’d be like, oh my god, amazing. They have two types of artichokes and puntarelle and these amazing ingredients.” But that day, she only had two ingredients on her mind. “Beetroot, beetroot, beetroot. Dill, dill, dill.” She made a “comedy borsch. An enormous pot. And I cooked it with enjoyment, for the first time in months.” She remembers thinking: “I’ve got it, my superpower is back. I just needed them to be out of the danger zone, and to know that my brother survived, defending Kyiv.”

Hercules makes some suggestions, then orders for us. To begin, a plate of punchy pickled tomatoes. She says that everybody in Ukraine makes fermented tomatoes in the summer. The chef sends over bread and a small dish of unrefined sunflower oil, which is nutty and toasted and impossibly moreish. The waitress explains that a woman in Ukraine makes it especially for Tatar Bunar. “I’m so glad you like it,” says Hercules. “It is the quintessential Ukraine. Ukraine in a bottle of oil.”

Hercules has spent much of her career challenging stereotypes about “eastern European” cuisine, puncturing the myth of stodgy potatoes and dumplings. “And overcooked cabbage,” she adds. In Strong Roots, she explains that boiled cabbage, for instance, came from Soviet canteens, rather than any Ukrainian tradition. Has she managed to change minds? She says it has been a bit of a challenge. “When I came here, 22 years ago, people were like, ‘Oh, you’re from Ukraine. So … Russia?’ Guys, why do you have this massive blind spot on the map? Ukraine is massive. Turkey is an hour’s flight from us. We’re in this belt of super-hot climate.” For Mamushka, she wrote up Ukrainian dishes from the south, zingy and fresh with herbs and vegetables, like the food we’re eating this evening. “But I’ve finally also embraced our winter dishes, which do include potatoes and dumplings, and banush, which we’re going to try. And cabbage, which is not overcooked, but delicious, braised, cooked by someone who cares.”

For mains, Hercules has lamb cheburek. She has two sons, Wilfred, who is five, and Sasha, who is 13, and named after her brother. The cheburek is Sasha’s favourite and she will take half of it home for him. For me, she chooses plachinda with bryndza, which Hercules describes as somewhere between feta and halloumi; Ukrainians love cheese. The banush is wonderfully rich: “You know how you cook polenta in water or milk? Ukrainians cook it in sour cream, or creme fraiche. That is the richness you’re feeling.” We have a cool, crisp tomato salad to balance it out. Her parents’ home had an orchard, and her mother grew tomatoes there. “I kid you not, I weighed a particular monster one summer, and it was 700g. It was fragrant, juicy, meaty, everything that a tomato should be. We used to slice them like steaks, and all it needed was a little bit of Maldon salt.” (Maldon was her go-to present for her relatives, whenever she went home. “All of my aunties said, ‘Bring that strange, flaky salt, please.’”)

Hercules has done so much to popularise Ukrainian dishes in the UK. Has she taken anything back, apart from salt? “My husband was born in Cambridge, he’s very English in a way, and he cooked this incredible Sunday roast for my family.” She laughs. “He made yorkshire puddings, and my auntie’s mind was blown. And I think she tried it, after we left.” She does an impression of her aunt, telling her she had made “the yorkshire pudding”.

Her parents’ house has been taken by Russians. A house across the street has been bombed. “I’ve come to accept that we will never see my mum and dad’s house again,” Hercules says, but leaving the garden they planted 30 years ago has been difficult. Growing is a big part of Strong Roots. Even in Ukraine’s cities, she explains, people haven’t lost their connections to “growing, to cooking, getting together”. Everyone has a grandmother in the countryside that they’d be sent to for the summer. Hercules’ grandmother, Liusia, was a child when, in 1931, she, her mother and her siblings were deported from Bessarabia to northern Russia, transported on a train to live under brutal conditions. When Liusia eventually returned home, she got a job at a flower factory, growing roses. “It saved her,” says Hercules. “That’s what Strong Roots is really about, your stem. Even if it breaks, or if the petals will be blown off by a storm, we will still prevail and something new will grow out of it.”

When Hercules was growing up, her family (“we don’t even call it extended family, we just say family”) would get together at Liusia’s house in the summer, and there would be drinks and storytelling, sometimes with laughter, sometimes with tears, often with both. “These stories became really cinematic in my head. I think that’s why I’m doing what I do. This combination of food and storytelling was second nature.”

The waitress asks if we would like dessert. “Is there any kind of cocktail situation?” Hercules asks. Tuesday is small Wednesday, after all. Before we leave, almost four hours after we sat down to eat, the restaurant wants to take a photograph of Hercules. She poses in front of a wall with Ukrainian writing on it, “khai zhyve Bessarabia”. I ask her what it says. She translates: “Long live Bessarabia.”

Tatar Bunar, 152 Curtain Rd, London EC2, Tel 07771 013190. Strong Roots by Olia Hercules (Bloomsbury, £20) is out now. Order at observershop.co.uk for £16.20. Delivery charges may apply