This piece originally appeared in SAVEUR’s Spring/Summer 2025 issue. See more stories from Issue 204 here.

Today, in London, at the Leytonstone house she shares with her husband, ­photographer Joe Woodhouse, and their two sons, Sasha and Wilf, that spirit of conviviality is alive and well—and more necessary than ever. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Olia poured all her energy into activism and organizing, co­founding #CookForUkraine with friend and chef Alissa Timoshkina, and raising more than $2.5 million for organizations, including the Legacy of War Foundation, Choose Love, and UNICEF. Her spacious home kitchen is an anchor for this work, as well as a crucial refuge from it—a place where she can surround herself with beauty, life, and art, which she treats as a form of therapy.

In her forthcoming memoir, Strong Roots: A Memoir of Food, Family, and Ukraine, out this summer, Olia dives deep into her relationship with the idea of home, and the cyclical nature of settling in and ultimately being cast out that has affected her family across Eastern Europe for generations. When we caught up recently, we talked about bringing elements of these family histories into the kitchen (specifically in the form of Ukrainian paintings and embroidery), the life-giving power of surrounding oneself with plants, an industrial-size cooking device by the name of Pylyp, and how to draw strength from them all during difficult times.

Alex Testere: What first drew you to this home?

Olia Hercules: I’ve lived in London for about 22 years, and at the end of 2017, we were looking for a house that could also be a studio for my cooking classes and for my husband Joe’s photography. Our friends moved into a new place and mentioned the house across the street was for sale. The woman who lived there before had built this huge kitchen extension, kind of like a dining area and cookery area together, and there was this big cooker with two sides where we can chop, almost like his-and-hers, which was perfect as well. Joe had these massive custom cutting boards at our previous house, and they slotted perfectly into the sideboard. It was lucky—it had been done pretty much how we would have done it anyway.

What role does the kitchen play in your home now? 

It’s the epicenter of everything. I work there, and we’ve got a little settee where I like to read. I host cooking classes there, and record ­videos for the online lessons I host on Patreon. Joe will sometimes use it as a studio. We’ve filled it with plants, so it’s a little bit of a jungle. With the French doors and this big, tarnished 1930s mirror, there’s so much light. It feels like you’re outside or in an orangery.

Is there some special significance behind the plants?

When we moved in, there were two ­important things I wanted: a long table a lot of people could sit at, and the plants. I found this woman on Etsy who lives nearby and propagated loads of plants that I got for quite cheap. And now they’re huge, they’re like these massive trees that fill the kitchen. It’s important to me because my grandmother was basically, you know, she was inside and out. She had plants everywhere, and my mother as well, so I guess this is a continuation of that.

“Inside and out” reminds me of your book Summer Kitchens: Recipes and Reminiscences From Every Corner of Ukraine, where you wrote about the rustic outbuildings many Ukrainian homes have for gardening and for storing produce and jars of ferments—things like that.

When I describe my parents’ home, the first thing that comes to mind is the garden. For Ukrainians, this idea of a garden and of the land is very important. Our kitchen opens right onto the garden, where I’ve mostly got herbs and medicinals, things I can’t always get at the supermarket. And I’ve got so many little objects that reflect the plant world—embroideries, dried flowers, these Ukrainian Petrykivka-style paintings of a man in a garden, a fish in a barrel. It’s all quite surreal, I guess, but it reminds me of how I’m constantly trying to marry my memories of Ukraine with how we live here in London.

Tell me about what you’re fermenting now.

There are probably 50 jars sitting around at different levels of fermentation—purple corn, aubergines, cabbages, tomatoes. I’ve got all these experiments, and lots of them are set on plates because they can get very active and leak everywhere. The fridge is full of them, too. Poor Joe is just waiting for me to start giving them away. 

You’ve got a lot of different objects on display. Have you collected them over time?

They built up quite gradually. I wouldn’t say we’re hoarders, but we’re definitely not minimalists, me and Joe. He loves his French brocante, so we probably could kit out a restaurant with how many vintage French plates we’ve got. I’ve become quite obsessed with baskets, which we now have hanging from the ceiling, and which I use for foraging. I’m really into Ukrainian things, obviously, so I’ve got loads of pottery, textiles, and hand-embroidered antique cloths. There are watermelons everywhere, which are the symbol of Kherson, my home region in Ukraine. We also have these incredible cushions from Finnish designer Klaus Haapaniemi, with fabrics based on Finnish fairy tales. It’s a riot of color.

I know you’ve been doing more painting and drawing lately. Does that ­happen in the kitchen, too?

Art has really become my therapy over the last couple years, you know, whenever I’m feeling sad or there’s bad news, I just go, okay, time to get painting. I’ve got my revolving therapy door in the kitchen that I paint—it’s a Ukrainian tradition, actually. Before holidays, people will paint decorative designs and plants on their walls, which will suck in the bad energy and evil spirits; afterward, they whitewash the walls and start fresh. So I’ve got this door, and this time I’ve done a mural of dill flowers. The paint is quite thick at this point!

I’m definitely going to start doing that with the old kitchen doors at my house. With all the decorative detail, how do you keep the kitchen functional? 

Most of that [décor] is in the dining area—we’ve got this whole other more functional side. There’s quite a big larder, and these stainless steel sinks we put in, like proper restaurant-style, which we needed for the kind of work we’re doing. There are pots and pans everywhere, including a massive pot for when I am making an industrial amount of soup. We never make a small pot of borshch. I’ve got loads and loads of jars I use for fermenting, and kitchen towels, which are so useful. There’s my grandmother’s rolling pin, which has probably rolled thousands of dumplings throughout its life. Oh! And how could I forget about Pylyp!?

Who is Pylyp?

Pylyp is a giant metal steamer Joe got at a Vietnamese shop nearby for my first dumpling class, and of course we had to give him a Ukrainian name. He comes out pretty much every time I have a class or when I’m making a ton of dumplings. He’s also very useful for steaming whole heads of cabbage, which I actually do a lot, to ferment or to make cabbage rolls. Pylyp is one of the most important members of the family.

We should all be so lucky to have a Pylyp in the family. Whether it’s family or folks coming for a cooking class, what do you hope your guests feel when you invite them in?

Sometimes I’m like, “Oh my god, do people think I’m completely nuts?” But I think they feel that warmth. Joe and I joke that when the kids are older, we’ll have a more pristine kitchen, but for now it’s just chaos. People have told me they feel immediately at home here, though. I just want to bring around life, you know? And I want living things around me at all times, especially now. All of those objects, the garden, the plants—they give me strength.

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