On my second night in town in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, I was enjoying happy hour at Siaivo, a two-story art deco coffee shop and bar, when an air raid siren sounded from my phone. The day before, I was encouraged to download Air Alert, an early-warning app developed by the Ukrainian government and voiced by Mark Hamill—yes, Star Wars’ Luke Skywalker—who was now warning me to proceed to the nearest shelter. The graphic on my screen of a falling missile was unambiguous, but the sentiment at the bar was one of informed apathy. This was not the first time Hamill had warned locals. Outside the bar, the thrum of commuter traffic nearly drowned out the actual air raid siren coming from above. And inside? No one with a gin and tonic in hand was going anywhere. The bar was actually filling up, spilling out onto the balcony.
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The front window bench was crammed with people donning button-downs and lanyards, spilling in from a big tech conference down the block. Other patrons settled down beside a low bar top. They sat and watched barista-bartenders stir cold Irish coffees, which are anchored by the tartness of strawberry-fermented coffee beans from Kyiv’s Madheads Roastery. In other words, it was a scene that seemed remarkably normal. It had been more than a year and a half since the Russian invasion began, and despite a recent attack on a Caritas warehouse on the edge of the city, nightlife in Lviv had rebounded with resolve—not in weeks or days, but hours.
Phones quieted and Hamill’s voice retreated. Andriy Kosteniuk, the head chef and barista for Siaivo’s parent company, Shum Restaurant Group, suggested I sample a new gin they were debating stocking. Unless a more dire warning arrived, it was clear the night had just begun. This was no Jedi mind trick—rather, Ukrainians seem to have adopted a nonchalant acceptance of their circumstance. What other choice do they have?
“Russian planes, MiG-31s, crossed the border,” Kosteniuk explained casually. He’d been through far worse. “The first time there was a rocket attack, I slept all night and didn’t know, then I received so many calls asking how I was. I said, ‘I’m fine, thank you. How are you?’” he joked. “Then they told me there was an attack a kilometer behind my house.”
These days, most Ukrainians have a better sense of what’s happening. “When the planes go up, all of Ukraine receives this air alarm because they have rockets, but they could also just be training,” added Julia Venchak, Shum’s communications director.
“Typically, when we know it’s only training, we don’t stop what we are doing,” Kosteniuk said, explaining that like most people here, he knows someone serving on the front lines who can provide through private channels what he believes is the most accurate information. “When it’s a missile attack, we do differently, but there are shelters here in this building.” So, we ordered another round of Tanqueray and tonics before my next stop.
Sino Experimental opened its doors on the cusp of Covid. It had been Andrii Osypchuk’s lifelong dream to open a bar in Ukraine when he turned 30. That is exactly what he did following a decade spent working abroad in Greece and the United Arab Emirates, where he eventually became a brand ambassador for Patrón Tequila.
In 2021, two years after Sino Experimental’s debut, Osypchuk was named a top 10 bartender in Diageo’s World Class Global Final. He has since sold the bar, but still consults on the seasonal menu that is built around fresh flowers, herbs, fruits and fungi. In the beginning, Osypchuk went out on foraging excursions every weekend. “I was so passionate about the Ukrainian scene and Ukrainian produce,” Osypchuk told me. “We would forage the forest creating a new menu every week; we would play with mushrooms and hay.”
That hyper-local approach to cocktails is what helped Osypchuk achieve international acclaim, and it’s still on full display at the bar. On one of his previous foraging trips, Osypchuk recalled the moment he and a companion were stopped by a painter who “looked like he had been living in the woods.” This man brought Osypchuk to his garden and invited him to take whatever he could cull from the wild cherry trees. The fruit is a source of national pride among Ukrainians, the backbone of Piana Vishnia, a.k.a. “Drunk Cherry,” a brandied cherry liqueur that’s been a household staple across the region since the 17th century.
In the hours before I visited Sino Experimental, I’d had my first taste of Piana Vishnya at the original location of the eponymous bar. The homegrown, now international, chain of pubs is known for its namesake version of the liqueur. Since the war began, new outposts have popped up across Eastern Europe, and just last month its latest location landed in London’s Soho neighborhood, a few doors down from the World’s 50 Best-recognized Bar Termini.
Back at Sino Experimental, Osypchuk decided to incorporate the cherished fruit into a coffee and cherry soda smoked with cherry wood chips. “You could mix it with any spirit,” he said.
These infused mixers were a hit, and he quickly grew his own line of craft tonics. His instant success was partially aided by the war. “We started to sell these to bars a year ago when the Coca-Cola factory was under attack, and there was no tonic available on the market,” he said. When Russian attacks on bottle manufacturers begat a nationwide glass shortage, Osypchuk pivoted to cans. “Lots of brands moved to different sizes or shapes of bottles or cans because they couldn’t get glass in that volume,” he said. Many of these businesses got cans in Poland and set up canning lines in Ukraine. “Now I bring cans here and have my own small line,” he said.
I told him I was familiar with the problem. The night before I left for Europe, I’d visited Pebble Bar in New York City for the launch of The Last Drop’s latest release, a 32-year-old single-malt Irish whiskey. It was my last drop of liquid courage before embarking on my somewhat anxiety-provoking trip. I toasted with a Sazerac rep who asked me where I was headed next. When I laid out my plans, she shared how she had just learned the group sourced their bottles from a glass factory in Ukraine before the Russian invasion and continued to financially support the factory, even after they’d changed suppliers.
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I’d read stories about how in the early days of the war, in February 2022, the Ukrainian government had encouraged civilians to repurpose old bottles for Molotov cocktails. It was a romantic notion to picture Buffalo Trace empties playing a role in the resistance. I had decided to seek out the factory in the east to no avail. Osypchuk explained why I couldn’t find it.
“About 30 miles from Kyiv, in the north, there are a few international glass factories there, but all of them are destroyed,” he revealed. “I had wanted to purchase from them myself, but no one answers the phone, there’s nothing there.”
He excused himself before returning to our table with a round of Patrón shots. As we toasted to Ukrainian victory, Luke Skywalker informed us of the all-clear, blessing us with a “May the force be with you.” The recording was the stuff of dystopian science fiction, ringing out in real time. I’m not sure if the assurance of a looping soundbite, made a long time ago in what felt like a galaxy far, far away, made me feel more or less alone. But the MIGs were gone for now. We hit the street.
A short walk away, on Cathedral Square, I found an extended terrace season was still in full force. Despite the early winter nights, locals lingered outdoors sipping drinks. Speakers in the window of People Place Bar blasted Amerie’s “1 Thing” from a D.J. booth up front. The bar’s awning canopied tables spilled out toward the walls of the historic 14th-century Archcathedral Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin. Prior to the Russian invasion, smoking and drinking around the church was unthinkable, but now a sociable babushka eating her dinner from Tupperware sat amicably beside a clique of chic young women starting the night with spritzes.
“Our bar is all about emotions, and you should feel this is a safe place, like a home, where everyone is your friend,” co-owner Pavlo Ostrytskyi told me over a round of Oaxacan Old Fashioneds. The cocktail menu is thick with old and new classics, including an Aviation and a Dead Russian (the bar’s brazen take on White Russian). However, a list of lighter and sweeter original creations changes themes with the seasons, while, at the same time, appealing to the young women who outnumber men—not just at the bar, but in all corners of the city, a consequence of the war. This past winter, drinks included the tangerine vodka-based Winter People, inspired by the poetry of Kuzma, the lead singer of 2000s Ukrainian pop band Skryabin.
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“People are still having fun–it’s not easy to say the truth, but everyone here is still trying to live a normal life, ” explained Antony Pivlak, People Place Bar’s bar manager. “Many people are living one day at a time because you never know when some rocket can just destroy you.”
Unlike more established restaurant groups like Shum and Fest, Ostrytskyi and his partners are among those who take business “week by week” as they weigh their personal and professional obligations. Ostrytskyi does have a side gig though, operating West Bartenders School, which provides weeklong instruction at all skill levels and gives him first crack at potential new hires in a competitive market. “We always need good bartenders in the high season,” he said. “If you show some talent, it’s very easy to find a job right now.”
The pair also bring their expertise to Kyiv on occasion. A few days after our meeting, Ostrytskyi boarded a train to work the Tanqueray booth at the Wine & Spirits Ukraine expo, a semi-annual trade fair at the city’s International Exhibition Center. Even as targeted missile strikes on Ukraine’s capital have become commonplace, conferences like the Diageo Bar Academy have continued as planned.
Ostrytskyi explained to me how the bar scene in Lviv first scaled down during Covid, then again when alcohol sales were banned across the country during the first months of the war. Now, however, investors near and far view Lviv as a safe investment.
People Place didn’t start that way. The bar opened in the early days of the pandemic, and almost instantly adjusted to becoming a true speakeasy. “We had dark paper over the windows so you couldn’t see what was going on inside from the outside,” Ostrytskyi said. “Guests would come to a door a few doors down, enter into the catacombs, make their way to our basement, then come upstairs.”
I had to laugh. I explained that this was strikingly similar to how one gains entry to William Rabbit in Krakow, which I visited the night before crossing into Ukraine. I had spent more time trying to locate the unmarked entrance, several doors away from the bar’s listed address, than I did drinking inside.
“A lot of bars were doing something similar,” said Ostrytskyi. “We had some nights that were quite loud, and we’d just say be quiet, turn the music off, wait for the police to leave and start again.”
A few rounds into our chat, I had to leave to meet a date at Promin, a nearby pizzeria.
I got caught up in an impromptu street concert en route. A throng of teenagers formed a circle dance around a mosh pit, all of them singing at the top of their lungs to a pair of guitarists rotating between covers of the Cranberries’ “Zombie” mixed with Nirvana’s “Rape Me” and “Come as You Are.” Amid the gentle chaos, kids passed hats to collect money for the war effort. There was no opportunity too small, too brief, to raise money for the cause. Back at Siaivo, cocktail fundraisers bought drones and trucks for family and friends fighting on the front lines.
The restaurant group that owns Siaivo also runs Promin. Its margherita pie rivaled any I’ve had, from Razza in Jersey City to Sartoria Panatieri in Barcelona. One fed us both myself and my date, and the fluffy, blistered crust—borne from 48-hour fermented dough made with imported Italian 00 flour—cost $6. I decided to switch things up and sample a juicy Cabernet Sauvignon from Sergiy Stakhovsky, the Ukrainian tennis player turned vintner who, since 2018, has been producing wines on Ukraine’s mountainous southwestern border with Hungary.
Even though it was two hours till curfew—only 10 pm—it was still too late to legally buy liquor in town. However, our waitress explained that every business in the country had a workaround. I simply scanned the QR code on my table, which brought me to a Venmo equivalent, and she would buy our wine out of pocket before I paid her $2.70 directly. I sent a DM to Kosteniuk to confirm this, and he assured me that it was standard operating procedure.
He also shared some insight on the after-hours scene: I could crash a house party before curfew set in, but warned I would have to remain inside until sunrise. “If you want to leave sooner, they just close the door and you are on your own,” he said. “We don’t know each other, go home.”
As rumor goes, should the military find someone outside after curfew, they could be drafted into the army overnight. While no one I encountered could name anyone they knew who met this fate firsthand, it has evidently become an effective deterrent. Despite many Ukrainians’ best efforts to live normally, there is no Jedi mind trick for blocking out the war all around them.
Published: April 22, 2024
