The Ukrainian Chef
Chef Ivan Bondar escapes Ukraine for Nantucket.
Written by Brian Bushard
Photography by Kit Noble
For Ivan Bondar, the move to Nantucket could not have been more stark. Every morning, before he goes to work as a chef at Yummy, Bondar checks social media for news from his hometown in Ukraine, where his parents and two brothers still live. Just one day before he sat down with N Magazine, his hometown was pounded by over 300 drones, the result of a Russian aerial attack that left one person dead and a pile of rubble where a residential apartment once stood.
Even on Nantucket, the war in Ukraine still follows him—three years after he left the country for a shot at a better life in the U.S. “My brother is a doctor at the military hospital, and he will send videos from Ukraine that are absolutely horrible,” Bondar said. “They’re more horrifying than what you would see in a horror movie.”
Bondar made his way to Nantucket in the summer of 2022 on a work visa for the job at Yummy. He’s also made the rounds from restaurant to restaurant, a winding path that’s taken him places as close as the Great Harbor Yacht Club, and as far as Alaska, where he worked for a time at a seafood processing factory outside of Anchorage. At one point, he took a job in the kitchen of a restaurant in Jupiter, Florida, and then with two luxury cruise lines, which ended up taking him around the world. This summer, he is back for a fourth season at Yummy, where his coworker happens to be from Russia of all places—though the two are friends.
A big part of coming to Nantucket was to raise enough money to make regular donations to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Bondar likes to say he’s still able to fight from afar one plate at a time, even after moving to America. “It’s important to support my family and support the army,” he said. “I’m not joining the army, but at the same time, I want to do something for my country, because it’s crazy what’s going on over there.”
“Leaving my parents and brothers was a hard decision,” the 32-year-old added.“ I keep calling my mom every day to talk about what’s going on. She also wants to leave the country too, but she doesn't want to leave my brothers and father, even when our city is bombarded every day. Yesterday, there were two big buildings shot at and destroyed. The mall I grew up shopping at was destroyed."
The longer the war plods along, the more donations Bondar makes—though he’s also made an effort to push himself as a chef at the same time. Last fall, he wrote a cookbook. It was a modern take on the Ukrainian cuisine he learned from his family combined with a zero-waste philosophy, meaning he uses every part of the fruits and vegetables he cooks, roots to leaves. The idea is not only to practice sustainability in the kitchen, but to honor traditional Ukrainian cuisine. When the lunch line at Yummy cools off this fall, Bondar is thinking of adding some Ukrainian staples like borscht and dumplings to the menu’s local lunch staples like tuna sandwiches, cheeseburgers and spicy fried chicken sandwiches and wraps.“
Ukrainian cuisine has always been more than just food to me,” he writes in his book, called Sustainable Ukrainian Cuisine: Zero-Waste Recipes from the Heart of Ukraine. “It is a story, a culture, and the warmth of home, passed down through generations. In every spoonful of borscht, in every bite of varenyky, there is an entire world filled with memories of childhood, celebrations, and shared meals with loved ones."
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