‘The food, oh the food! It’s so good’: This homespun Chapel Street venue will ‘wow’ you

There’s a perfectly appropriate exclamation when you first enter Otakoi, Melbourne’s only Ukrainian restaurant. That word is otakoi, a Ukrainian interjection that translates as something like “Wow!” or “Would you look at that!”

I walk into a lot of restaurants. I can’t remember the last time I was transported like this. Embroidered textiles cover tables and banquettes. Curtains frame a faux window to create a cottage feel. Wheat stems are woven into light shades and around a mirror. Colourful ceramics are mounted on a wall and baskets of produce are fixed above a fireplace in a bountiful diorama. In an era of colour by numbers, play-it-safe restaurants, Otakoi is arrestingly handmade.

As you’re taking all this in, up comes a waiter in national costume offering bread for dipping into salt, a traditional welcome for honoured guests. We are off to a good start.

Varenyky tasting plate (dumpling fillings include potato, meat and salmon with cream cheese).Bonnie Savage

Owner Hanna Kachura has been saying the same thing, overwhelmed by the heartening response she’s had since opening in July. Kachura arrived in Australia with her son three years ago, refugees from the Russia-Ukraine war. With a varied background in finance, marketing and TV production, Kachura didn’t picture hospitality in her future.

But she realised there were no Ukrainian restaurants in her new home town, and her Australian partner, Michael O’Hanlon, kept telling her how tasty her food was, and he happened to be a chef, and before you know it, there they are, weaving wheat into light fittings and opening a restaurant.

In an era of colour by numbers, play-it-safe restaurants, Otakoi is arrestingly handmade.

The food, oh the food! It’s so good. The borshch (beetroot soup) has made a dozen people cry because it’s just like babusya’s. Even if you don’t hold a family recipe close, it’s easy to find a place in your heart for this one: ruby red thanks to the late addition of foil-roasted beetroot, sturdy and hearty thanks to slow-braised beef chunks.

Borshch (beetroot soup).Bonnie Savage

Beetroot also stars in the shuba, a pretty, layered salad with cured herring, potato and pickled onions melded with mayo. Shuba means fur coat; the idea is that the herring is wearing one.

The chicken Kyiv is a golden, oozy stunner, made to a recipe the owners saw on MasterChef Ukraine. Chicken breast on the bone is bashed out thinly, stuffed with garlic, dill and parsley butter, rolled, fried then roasted, so it’s crisp but not oily.

You should also eat the smoked mackerel, definitely the varenyky (dumplings), stuffed cabbage rolls and the banosh, a creamy cornmeal porridge topped with pork crackling, but I better get to desserts.

Triple crepes stuffed with poppyseed, cottage cheese and sour cherries.Bonnie Savage

The layered honey sponge is the prettiest, but the crepes stuffed with poppyseed, cottage cheese and sour cherries are the best: rich, nutty, not too sweet. If I get really sad one day, I’ll comfort myself with these and a shot of Ukrainian vodka.

There are occasional bumps in the service experience, which is unfailingly warm but not unerringly smooth. The team is green, keen and they’ll get there. One of the most amazing things about Otakoi is that it’s providing employment for 10 new Ukrainian arrivals, everyone from the teen sisters who arrive after school to fold dumplings to the grandmother who comes in the mornings to clean.

The restaurant also buys directly from Ukraine: the chef uniforms are from Kharkiv, for example, where a clothing factory persists through countless bombings. Add to this the outreach to the broader Australian community and this little shopfront restaurant becomes just one more example of how food creates meaning and connection, across culture and across the seas. Otakoi, indeed.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine

Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.

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