Chef Lisa Nakamura oversees Ubuntu’s kitchen, while trainees Iryna Mykhalchuk (left) and Nadezhda Mayster prep for lunch.
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welcome: spiced stews simmering over a low flame. Adem takes a quick break from chopping onions to chat on the phone with one of her two daughters back in Ethiopia, to whom she speaks about once a week. Despite her enthusiasm for the training program, Adem acknowledges that her struggle with arthritis makes her unlikely to end up working in a restaurant. She walks with a slight limp, keeping one leg almost straight. The 48year-old grandmother is hardly suited for the arduous physical work of a restaurant kitchen. For 30 years, her husband worked as a truck driver in the U.S. and she stayed home in Ethiopia with her daughters. Most winters, when business was slow, he’d come home for a few months. Four years ago, with her daughters both married and soon to have children of their own, she joined her husband. But waiting this long has its downside: She no longer has any sway, legally, to bring her daughters to the U.S. Now, her husband’s health issues force him to work less at his job, which also supports their children and grandchildren and Adem’s mother in Ethiopia. She hopes to use her newly improved English and kitchen skills to find a job in elder care, as a cook or an aide, to help support her family. Mykhalchuk is also unsure about ending up in a restaurant kitchen. In Ukraine, she ran a school kitchen, cooking for 250 kids five days a week. She was somewhat ambivalent about leaving her home in western Ukraine, pulled here along with 17 other family members by her brotherin-law. “My son had a dream about America,” Mykhalchuk says, half-smiling. Her kids, ages 3, 8, PHOTOGRAPHY BY KYLE JOHNSON
6/9/17 10:48 AM