Beliy Shum city café is a combination of three projects we have in Odessa

Creators of Beliy Shum city café talk about their projects in Odessa and Kyiv, about collaboration with BURSA Kyiv and why their new facility on Podol is a place to meet friends.

– What did you do before you started a catering business?

– Oleg: I have a degree in law, and for seven years I was into professional photography. Vika worked in an office and helped me on the shooting set on a regular basis. After marriage she quit and started a food blog in LiveJournal.

– Vika: I really liked to cook and to show how to make a dish differently than what we used to at home or in a restaurant. Oleg taught me how to take photos. I wrote recipes and took pictures of dishes I cooked. That was a hobby. After I quit the office job I helped Oleg more. Our friend Anya Bakhonko joined us. She did extraordinary things with her own hands. It just happened that we started to arrange celebrations. Anya did themed decorations, I did the menu, and Oleg helped to buy everything, carry, arrange and take photos. We did a lot of wedding parties and candy-bars. We tried to turn a formal banquet where people come to eat into an evening party where everyone communicates with each other, congratulates the newlyweds and has fun. At some point we started to get orders not only for wedding parties and candy-bars, but also for pasta. Oleg said, “We should open a restaurant,” and we said, “No, it won’t work, no one will come, we will go out of business and end up in debt.” That’s how we opened a restaurant.

– So how did you implement this idea?

– Oleg: In summer 2012 we participated in the street food festival in Odessa with our Make My Cake desserts. After that we realized that we wanted to experience these feelings and feel joy of our guests on a regular basis. In 3-4 months we started to deliver orders to coffee-houses, and when we saw there was a demand for our products we opened our first Make My Cake shop in March 2013. We hired a couple of pastry chefs, bur for some six months we did our share of baking, purchasing and standing at the bar counter. Just to let you know, our first shop was only 20 sq. m, it was food to go.

– What other projects do you have in Odessa?

– Oleg: In some six months after we opened the shop we got interested in coffee and started a thorough research of this subject. In July 2014 we launched a joint Atelier project together with Olga and Denis Belenko: only coffee, single varieties, roasted in Ukraine, one-of-a-kind grunge design. We were the first in Odessa to open doors for the third wave of coffee-houses. Three months later we opened a coffee-house Les Community Centre, and the focus of this facility was on creative events: reading poems, yoga classes, small concerts. Then in February 2015 we withdrew from Atelier project and opened San Michele coffee-house with other partners. The feature of this place was antique furniture and equipment: as if visitors drop by into a pre-revolutionary apartment and get a cup of coffee there. We were in this project until October 2015.
In September that year we opened Frebule restaurant. In a month and a half we opened Bely Kit in the premises of Les Community Centre – a place for nothing but coffee with minimum desserts. In 2017 the first Make My Cake shop was opened at Mechnikov Street in Kyiv, and in November that year the second shop was opened at Stanislavsky Street. In late December we moved our nice Frebule restaurant into the huge premises of 4City, where we were able to evolve. We received great support there and a chance to work with Olga and Denis Belenko again. It was their idea to divide Frebule into 2 concepts: FRE (a democratic place with a large choice of breakfasts, lunches and cocktails) and BULE (a fine dining restaurant opened in evening hours five days a week and offering a special menu).
In February 2018 we opened Make My Cake café in Odessa, and in May – Beliy Shum city café in BURSA Kyiv on Podol.

– How did you find out about BURSA Kyiv and how did Beliy Shum come to be?

– Oleg: I got acquainted with Vasya Grogol, Director General of BURSA Kyiv, through architect Slava Balbek. We bumped into each other in a coffee-house in Kyiv and Slava said, “I am in the middle of creating a hotel and the guys there need a restaurant.” At first Vika wasn’t very enthusiastic about this restaurant idea, because this meant a global approach. But after I met Vasya and understood what kind of project BURSA Kyiv team was making, I suggested a city café. Initially we planned to take Bely Kit concept as a basis. It is a coffee-house opened 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Add food and alcohol drinks into the menu, and it would be great. When we started to work on design project we realized that this concept was not good for the available space. Bely Kit is a spacious room with large windows, and premises in BURSA Kyiv are located on the semi-basement floor and have a different atmosphere. In the end, we decided to create Beliy Shum, and not Bely Kit.

– What is the meaning of the name of this place?

– Oleg: The very notion of white noise (beliy shum) means a lot of associations we can relate to. It is a sound of a baby in the mother’s womb, sounds of waterfall. It seems something loud at first, but in fact this is the sound of tranquillity. Beliy Shum city café is a combination of three projects we have in Odessa: food from Frebule, coffee from Bely Kit and desserts from Make My Cake. We have selected this format because we would like Beliy Shum to meet demands for breakfast, lunch and evening meetings over a glass of wine. This is an everyday type of facility.

– Can you tell more about the menu? Who has developed it?

– Vika: I am responsible for menus in all our projects acting as a brand chef. Beliy Shum menu is fairly large, but we decided not to stick to any particular cuisine. There are no rules in the menu, but it is not fusion or sushi-pizza either. Let’s take the simplest category – soups. It may be Japanese ramen, Vietnamese pho ga, Italian lentil soup, French onion soup or consommé with duck raviolis. We use many seasonable vegetables, fruit and greens, lots of local products. As to desserts, we have a special mix of French and American cuisines: pasta and new-style cheesecakes. We monitor our guests’ response and update the menu once a month.

– What about alcohol?

– Oleg: Bar menu lists wines mostly. Firstly, we want everything to be civil, and wine is not a drink that would knock guests off their feet quickly. And secondly, the world of wines resembles the world of coffee: taste of the drink depends on its country of origin, treatment method, bottle and serving temperature. We have studied coffee for three years and realized that wine is a perfect alcohol drink for us. We also have a classic world cocktail menu. No shot drinks or Green Mexican cocktail, but at the same time it is not about mixing, when a bartender pays more attention to a drink than to a guest.

– How do you see the new café fitting into Podol environment?

– Oleg: We would like Podol guests and residents to perceive Beliy Shum as a place that has been there for ages, but few people knew about it.

– What do you think the target audience of Beliy Shum is? Who would go there?

– Oleg: Friends. Not our friends, but just friends. People sharing our values: love of food, love of aesthetics and respect for each other. If someone likes to have a good meal and to communicate, is not snobbish and is open to the world – they are our kind of people, our friends.

– As far as I understand, you are moving to Kyiv now? What appeals to you in this city?

– Oleg: Now we are tuning up all processes to be able to live in two cities at a time. We like Kyiv because here one gets an immediate response to one’s efforts. What Vika does for development of food culture in Odessa – dishes made of by-products, unconventional grains and textures – is not readily appreciated. People need some time to understand and accept something new. In Odessa people prefer comfortable food, while Kyiv audience is open to experiments and it is very stimulating. As to Podol, environment there resembles Odessa. Low-rise buildings, unhurried pace, and its residents have creative occupations, so BURSA Kyiv fits in perfectly.