Petro Saman

“A chef is a manager who is responsible for everything that happens in the kitchen. At the same time, he has to combine his creativity, human resources management, and business requirements,” says Petro Saman, chef at the Ukrainian restaurant “Khutorets na Dnipri”.

Since he was a child, Petro watched his grandmother, who was a professional chef, cook deliciously and skilfully. That’s how it all started. “already at the age of 10, I was experimenting with baking cakes and cooking various dishes,” Petro recalls, as he cooked for himself and his friends as a child. Immediately after school, he went to a vocational school to become a cook. He gained his first experience in the kitchen in Kyiv at the “KyivExpoPlaza” Exhibition Centre, where he quickly became a sous chef. In 2008, he received an offer to become a sous chef at an Italian restaurant, where he worked side by side with an Italian brand chef. He first tried his hand at the role of chef at the “Shato” restaurant, where the management appreciated his imaginative approach to work, creativity, and responsibility.

“You can’t become a chef only after graduating from a specialized educational institution and taking courses. You can become one by putting your love for your work, and various skills and stress- resistant qualities into practice.”

His creativity and interest in combining different ingredients helped him grow in the culinary business. After working with a lot of different food combinations, he has identified his favourite ingredient - garlic: “It gives balance to the dishes and in different proportions gives different flavours - sharp, spicy, savoury, aromatic.” In addition to garlic, there are many other local products that Ukrainian cuisine combines, “because Ukraine is a country with a unique variety of products... Only Italian cuisine can compete with Ukrainian cuisine in this respect.” Petro Saman is confident that Ukrainian cuisine will be a brand of country, but only if we get rid of the inferiority complex that has been imposed since the Soviet era. “Ukrainian cuisine will become a national and global trend... At the level of ideas, tastes, and products, we have all the prerequisites.”