Ukraine sushi restaurants thrive despite war-battered economy

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Soldiers visit Om-Nom-Nom, a sushi and pizza restaurant in Sloviansk, Ukraine. Sushi restaurants are popular in Ukraine and represent a sense of normalcy during war. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

Soldiers visit Om-Nom-Nom, a sushi and pizza restaurant in Sloviansk, Ukraine. Sushi restaurants are popular in Ukraine and represent a sense of normalcy during war.

SLOVIANSK, Ukraine — Roughly a 30-minute drive from the rubble-strewn hell-scape of Russian-occupied Bakhmut, in a brightly lit restaurant on a lightless street, a pair of Ukrainian soldiers are waiting for takeout. Sushi rolls. Sixty-four assorted pieces.

"We are living human beings," says one of the soldiers, an artilleryman who goes by the call-sign Traumat. "It's very important to be able to come back [from the front lines] and have something from our normal life."

"Such dinners unite us," he says.

Nearly anywhere you go in Ukraine — even in artillery-scarred front-line towns — the country's battered but vital consumer economy is still chugging along.

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Sushi rolls with cream cheese, a popular ingredient in Ukrainian sushi, are served at Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

Sushi rolls with cream cheese, a popular ingredient in Ukrainian sushi, are served at Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine.

Through air raid sirens and missile strikes, people are still spending money at shopping malls, grocery stores and nail salons. Despite mass migrations of people, coffee shops, bars and sit-down restaurants are still staffed and crowded in cities big and small.

Of all the businesses still operating, though, the country's popular and almost ubiquitous sushi restaurants are perhaps the most improbable.

Dependent on imported ingredients like fresh fish, restaurants have had to navigate supply issues, border protests and power outages. Staffing shortages, long an issue in Ukraine's restaurant industry, have worsened as young people have fled or been conscripted.

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Oleksander Lapshunkov manages the restaurant Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia. Claire Harbage/NPR hide caption

Oleksander Lapshunkov manages the restaurant Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia.

"People could make films about how Ukrainian businesses adapted and survived through all of this," says Oleksander Lapshunkov, the manager of Island Sushi in Zaporizhzhia. "We have proved we can survive through anything."

Russia's invasion of Ukraine has thrashed the country's economy. In the first year after Russia's full-scale invasion, the United Nations estimated that Ukraine's economy contracted by more than 30%. Ukraine's finance ministry said it was the largest recession the country had experienced since it won independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

2023 was better. Assisted by tens of billions of dollars in foreign aid, the economy stabilized, as businesses adapted to their wartime reality. In an opinion piece, Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's economy minister, wrote that they're projecting 4.6% growth in 2024.

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