The opening of the Tatarka restaurant in Odessa, which, as noted, serves “Crimean dishes,” caused a loud scandal online. The online publication “GORDON” tells the chronology of events.
The founder of the Tatarka. Crimean Cuisine chain is Ukrainian restaurateur Vladimir Biryukov, and the owner of the Odessa establishment is Alexandra Mikolyuk. After the opening of the establishment in Odessa, the Crimean Tatars were outraged by the presence of yantik, pasties and lula-kebab made from pork, as well as alcohol, on the menu of the Odessa restaurant.
A representative of the Crimean Tatar people, Zahida Adilova, said on Facebook that the establishment serves national dishes of the Crimean Tatars in a distorted form.
“Or maybe stop appropriating and desecrating? It’s very nice when the culture of the indigenous people is presented with dignity and at a high level. However, it is very offensive and hurts feelings when they simplify it to the format of “honey baklava, sunflower seeds, corn.” This simply shows the baseness and humiliation of me as a representative of the Crimean Tatars. While the entire civilized world is fighting for the protection of indigenous peoples and decolonization, Ukraine is blooming its own, internal “gastronomic” colonialism,” she was indignant. “Large restaurant chains and businessmen take our name, our dishes, wrap them in a cheap wrapper of harem goods and make millions from it.”
Adilova emphasized that even the name of the establishment is “a marker of neglect and ignorance.”
“Calling a restaurant of Crimean Tatar cuisine with the ethnonym “Tatar” is the same as opening a restaurant of authentic Mexican cuisine and calling it “Latino”. This is depersonalization of an indigenous woman for the sake of hype. But look at their official menu. Real Crimean Tatar cuisine is a refined balance, knowledge of herbs, respect for dough and meat,” she wrote.
Adilova noted that pork was not used on the Crimean Tatar menu.
“And what is “Tatarka” doing? They created some kind of crazy surrogate: they mixed Crimean Tatar yantiki and chebureks with lula kebab from pork in one cauldron, added Turkish dishes there, seasoned them with Tatar dumplings, Kiev cutlets, European salads and snacks for beer. And this is called Crimean Tatar cuisine. This is blasphemy. over the gastronomic heritage, where Crimean Tatar culture serves only as a bright screen for banal earnings. But money doesn’t smell, right?” – she summed up.
After Adilova’s post received wide publicity, the owner of the Biryukov chain began threatening the Crimean Tatars in the comments under one of the restaurant’s Instagram posts.
“Get ready for deportation,” he responded to criticism in Russian.
Biryukov later deleted his comment, but did not apologize.
