KIEV, Ukraine
— Out in the fields of eastern Ukraine,
they fought the Russians. Now, as men in a kitchen, they are no less fearsome.
“It’s hard, it’s hot, but I’m
with my brothers,” said Leonid Ostaltsev, the bearded, tattooed founder of
Pizza Veterano, a freshly opened pizzeria here that hires only veterans of the
war in eastern Ukraine as cooks.
In the kitchen, the brothers in arms and spatulas spin
balls of dough, dice bell peppers and slide sizzling pizzas out of a hot oven.
The pizzas are made in the Ukrainian style, heaped with bacon and onions.
In the month since it opened, Pizza Veterano, a
restaurant where all the tablecloths are camouflage print, has become an
improbable hit, in part by focusing on an underserved segment of the
population.
Kiev, the
picturesque Ukrainian capital of churches and cobblestoned lanes built on a
bluff over the Dnieper River, is coping with a flood of returning war veterans,
about 12,000 of the estimated 50,000 soldiers demobilized as the 18-month war in the east wound
down in September. Hundreds of those veterans are looking for jobs and places
to hang out.
With the help of a veterans
union, many have started small businesses, opening auto repair shops or
refurbishing apartments. Most of them, though, are struggling, offered only a
pittance from the state for their service. A promise by the Kiev mayor’s office
to give every veteran about an acre of land, for example, has predictably
unraveled in bureaucracy.
“People who have military
experience, the experience of killing and, in addition, received a lot of
trauma are moving back into society,” Mr. Ostaltsev said. “They are pained,
frustrated, dissatisfied. What are they going to do?”
Bake pizza, it turns out, for
Mr. Ostaltsev and a half-dozen fellow veterans.
Like other vets, Mr. Ostaltsev
demobilized after a year at the front, ready to shroud his war memories in a
haze of drink. He tattooed a cross on his forearm for each lost comrade.
He volunteered with a veterans
association, trying to find meaning in helping his comrades.
But soon enough, he realized
that what he and his colleagues really needed were jobs. With seed money from a
Ukrainian-American investor, Pizza Veterano fired up its oven in one of the
city’s malls.
The pizza place has yet to
turn a profit, in part because a sign prominently declares that any veteran who
steps in the door gets a free pizza. “The government left me broke,” one
veteran, Aleksandr Petrov, said at the restaurant recently. “I love this
pizza.”
But it seems to be thriving,
packed with patrons most of the day. But to Mr. Ostaltsev and his employees,
money is not the important thing. They want to offer a place full of hopes in a
city and country without many of them lately.
Instead of two cooks, as
originally planned, Mr. Ostaltsev hired five, turning out about 150 pizzas a
day. The most popular comes with four types of meat — bacon, ham, chicken and
salami — along with heaps of mushrooms and onions. On the menu, it is called
The Dandelion, after the nom de guerre of Mr. Ostaltsev, a name said to send
shivers down the spines of the enemy in the east because of his reputation as a
fierce fighter.
Another selection much loved
by veterans is the Ukrainian, similarly layered in chunks of the local bacon,
called salo.
In this rough topography of
fat atop the pizza, the grease pools in the low ground.
“We are Ukrainians,” Mr.
Ostaltsev, a machine-gunner in the army, said of the bacon overkill on most
toppings. “The more the better.”
At Pizza Veterano, a real hand
grenade (defused) sits beside the cash register. It has become the centerpiece
of a collection of good luck charms Ukrainian soldiers typically carry in their
pockets: shell casings painted like Easter eggs and tiny, embroidered rag
dolls, called motanki.
Every Sunday, Pizza Veterano
holds free classes in cooking pizza for the children of veterans. It also
encourages patrons, the paying variety, to donate pizzas to military hospitals.
During the first month, customers ordered $3,500 worth of pizzas for military
hospitals, a princely sum in Ukraine these days.
Pizza Veterano is not the
first to try pounding swords into pizza pans.
Italian soldiers serving as
United Nations peacekeepers in southern Lebanon have offered civilians there
pizza-baking classes in the Italian Army’s mobile, truck-borne pizza ovens, in
the belief that pizzerias create jobs.
“It’s very important to spend
time together,” Lt. Jacopo Evangelisti said ina video posted online by the
United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, about the pizza program. “Confidence
building is an important task.”
Thrown into the war with
minimal training, Ukrainian soldiers faced a far superior force once the
Russian Army intervened.
After going through all this,
Rafail Agayev, a former machine-gunner and the head cook, said he now
encouraged other veterans to dive into small business. “The war was scary,” he
said. “But now, don’t be afraid, losing some money is the worst that can
happen.”
Peculiarly for Ukraine, nary a
health or fire inspector has asked for a bribe. But then, Mr. Agayev conceded,
“you would have to be very brave to ask us for a bribe.”
No comments:
Post a Comment