ABOUT BORSCHT
COOK-OFF
Meet the chef who put Ukrainian borscht on the world map – and why that story lives on in Houston
The man behind the movement
MEET YEVHEN KLOPOTENKO
Yevhen Klopotenko is a Kyiv-born chef, MasterChef Ukraine winner, and Le Cordon Bleu graduate who has spent nearly a decade on one mission: proving that Ukrainian food is not a footnote of someone else’s cuisine, but a living tradition of its own.
Starting in 2018, he traveled across Ukraine collecting family borscht recipes village by village — footage that became the documentary “Borsch. The Secret Ingredient.” In 2023, Netflix acquired and released the film worldwide, reframing it around Ukraine’s cultural identity during the Russian invasion — introducing millions of new people to the story we now share every November.
He’s also a restaurateur — co-owner of 100 Rokiv Tomu Vpered in Kyiv and Inshi bistro in Lviv, where centuries-old Ukrainian recipes get a modern stage.
His work is the reason our own team at HTX4Ukraine felt this story couldn’t stay in Ukraine alone. If one chef could spend years proving borscht belongs to Ukraine, the least we could do was cook a pot of it here in Houston.
Why UNESCO. Why Now.
In 2020, Klopotenko’s research helped add borscht to Ukraine’s own National Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage. The following year, Ukraine submitted borscht to UNESCO for international recognition.
2018–2020
Recipes, village by village
Klopotenko crosses Ukraine gathering family borscht traditions on camera.
2020
National recognition
Borscht enters Ukraine’s National Register of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
2021
UNESCO submission
Ukraine formally nominates borscht for international recognition.
Jul. 2022
Urgent safeguarding
Amid the full-scale invasion, UNESCO fast-tracks and inscribes it — a status reserved for heritage at real risk.
Culinary traditions rarely make UNESCO’s list at all — Urgent Safeguarding is reserved for heritage genuinely at risk of disappearing. In the middle of a war being fought over whether Ukrainian identity gets to exist, the world looked at a bowl of soup and confirmed, in writing, that it belongs to Ukraine.
Our Journey
WHY IT MATTERS TO US IN HOUSTON
For our community here in Texas, that recognition means something personal. Many of us are far from home — but a pot of borscht on the stove still smells like a grandmother’s kitchen in Kyiv, Poltava, or Lviv.
Hosting Borscht Cook-off is our way of keeping that identity alive on this side of the ocean — not as nostalgia, but as an act of pride, especially while Ukraine’s culture is being actively defended, one bowl, one recipe, one festival at a time.
Borscht Cook-off has grown into one of Houston’s largest Ukrainian cultural gatherings — and every bowl served here does double duty: it introduces our neighbors to a tradition centuries in the making, and it keeps that tradition impossible to erase, no matter how far from home we are.