As we have learned from the Atlas Obscura portal, more and more people are turning to show their support for ukrainians who are still at the front five months after the war started. One of these people is Vadym Granovskiyone of Ukraine’s leading baristas and coffee experts.
It turns out that Granovskiy, 43, woke up on the morning of February 24 to the sound of explosions and soon realized that the war had begun. It was confirmed that, after spending eight years supporting the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine, Russia was now attacking the whole of Ukraine. “You knew something was probably going to happen, but you were desperately hoping it wouldn’t,” she recalls.
Days passed, the fighting began to approach the city of Brovary, near Kyiv, and that was more than enough reason for Granovskiy and his wife to take their little daughter and leave. direct to poland. After 4 days of travel, Vadym opted to leave his family there, since they were safe on the other side of the border, and turned around. Even though he wasn’t a soldier, he felt compelled to contribute to resistance somehow. “I saw the tanks explode, I saw the bodies,” he explains. “I was able to see the real war, not on the screen, not on the phone, it was there.”
Granovskiy cafe, a symbol of unity
We are talking about one of Ukraine’s leading experts on the “cezve” brewing method, also called “ibrik”. This leads to what is commonly called “turkish coffee” or “from the east”. The technique itself consists of using a small pot with a long handle made of copper, called a “cezve”, to incorporate the coffee beans, which are then ground in water and exposed to a heat source. The result, as you can imagine, is strong and bitter coffee that is able to keep you awake for a long time.
Well, Granovskiy initially tested by sending the coffee to consume it coldbut he realized that the soldiers with whom he corresponded (whom he had met long before the outbreak of the war in his cafe Coffee in Action) could prepare coffee themselves being in the front, so the next thing was to provide them, for free” grains and all materials necessary to prepare your “cezve” well loaded with caffeine.
And this gesture makes Granovskiy very proud. For him, “cezve” is a drink that brings energy and encouragement, two things that Ukrainian soldiers definitely need these days. “In addition to the functional side of coffee, there is a social side. People talk when they drink coffee. I wanted the soldiers to have this little ritual, to bring them together,” he explains.
For Valery Siverchuk, a 49-year-old soldier, as well as a restaurateur and friend of Granovskiy, who is currently fighting in the Kharkiv region, the cafe is working as planned. “It is true, when there are no strikes or attacks, helps us relax“, he points out to Atlas Obscura through a Zoom call.
A few weeks after the war, a friend and colleague in the Ukrainian culinary world, the Chef Yevgen Klopotenko, 35, approached Granovskiy to comment that he loved borsch, but thought there should be strong coffee to represent Ukraine. To which Granovskiy replied: “Well, there is already one, it consists of putting cezve and espresso in the same cup.”
And that is how the drink known as Ukrainianwhich Granovskiy is now working on the possibility of producing hundreds of large cezve pots special for the army. It also provides Ethiopian beans roasted and ground over portable stoves or charcoal. And, obviously, since the soldiers do not have espresso machines at the front, he is in charge of sending them that one espresso mix for which they just need hot water and let it steep for two or three minutes before adding it to the cezve.
Granovskiy’s life before the war broke out
It should be noted that Granovskiy turned out to be finalist in 2014 in the Cezve/Ibrik Championship, organized by World Coffee Events. And this was partly because, although he is an expert in traditional cezve, he sometimes plays to put his personal touch on this drink. In fact Granovskiy, when he wanted a very strong cup of coffee, he used to make himself a cup of cezve coffee to which then added a double espresso. That’s why when the soldiers started asking for stronger coffee, he thought that this mixture could be the solution.
A short time later, when many soldiers had already been deployed to defend Kyiv, Granovskiy began to make packets of coffee and an energizing puree based on cold beer, cashew nuts and banana to give it to soldiers he had already met personally. Through word of mouth, demand grew rapidly and soldiers on the front lines they started asking for a stronger coffee to help them stay awake and alert.
Image by Vadym Granovskiy | Chris Parker
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