Lunch and carefully avoiding politics at the only Russian-Ukrainian restaurant in Singapore

A shipping operations manager decided to change that.

A job posting brought Vadim Zubovskyy, along with his wife Alena and then-two-year-old son, to Singapore in 2004. After moving to the city-state, the couple continued cooking their family recipes. Eventually, they began sharing their homemade dumplings with friends.

Sixteen years later, Zubovksyy and Alena opened Singapore's only Russian-Ukrainian restaurant. The restaurant, named Dumplings.RU, uses the online domain "ang moh dumplings," Singapore slang that refers to a white person or foreigner.

The couple has since launched two more outlets in Singapore. When I visited their flagship restaurant for lunch on Friday, I found Russian, Ukrainian, and Soviet memorabilia plastered on the walls. Europop songs, mostly in Russian, blared from the speakers.

There were about two dozen seats in the restaurant. Every single one was filled with diners.

I met Zubovskyy as dishes began making their way to my table.

"Are you sure you can finish that?" he said, eyeing my heaping order of 12 dumplings, Ukrainian borscht, kotlety, herring salad, and medovik.

Zubovskyy and his wife are Russian nationals and Singapore permanent residents, local outlet Mothership.sg reported.

He was born in a Ukrainian city in the former Soviet Union to a Ukrainian father and Russian mother. His mother is of mixed Ukrainian and Russian heritage, and lives in Kyiv with his brothers. And while he now manages the only Russian-Ukrainian restaurant in Singapore, his background is not in the kitchen: Zubovskyy works a full-time job in shipping.

"I'm not an expert or a professional cook. It's all my and my wife's family recipes," he told me.

Zubovskyy's children grew up in Singapore, studying in local neighborhood schools. His daughter was born in the city-state. During my lunchtime visit, his son, Mark — who served in the Singapore army to complete the nation's mandatory military service — was in the restaurant helping serve diners.

Despite his family's multinational background, Zubovskyy told me his restaurant was attacked online for its Russian heritage since Russia began its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. In an interview with a local newspaper, he said one social media user "asked [him] to get Putin to stop the war."

Zubovksyy said he and his team responded by donating 10% of the restaurant's delivery sales to humanitarian efforts in Ukraine. The restaurant has since donated $500 to the Ukrainian Red Cross Society.

The restaurant also partnered with a local organization to help stranded Russian and Ukrainian students in Singapore, pledging to provide them with free food.

Beyond these details, though, Zubovskyy repeatedly steered our conversation away from politics. Politics, he said, have already affected the restaurant, and he has to think about his family back home.

"We have a lot of family [living] in Kyiv as well," he said. "We're praying for this to be over. It should be over," he added.

There are around 4,000 Russians living in Singapore, per local media reports. Ukrainians number at about 450, reported The Straits Times. Apart from Dumplings.RU, there is only one other Russian restaurant in Singapore, and, unlike Zubovkyy's restaurant, it is heavily influenced by Hainanese cuisine.

I spoke to a diner named Kimberley, who excitedly showed me the bottles of Russian vanilla soda she bought at the restaurant and was bringing home.

"I got curious what Russian and Ukrainian food was like when I saw news of the war," she said. "When I read [Zubovskyy] was born in Ukraine, I wanted to support," she added.

When I asked Zubovskyy to describe the differences between Russian and Ukrainian food, he said both countries have common dishes, but others, like dumplings, can differ.

One of the restaurant's most popular items is a platter of 12 dumplings with different fillings (19.90 Singapore dollars, or $15), including lamb, beef, chicken, and salmon. It was a mix of Russian-style pierogi and Ukrainian-style vareniki and halushki. It was my first taste of Russian-Ukrainian food, and I devoured the whole plate.

I returned the next day for lunch. My favorites were the Russian pork stew zharkoe and the beef and lamb dumplings.

Singapore food critic and writer KF Seetoh told me the local community is curious about "culinary cultures," which contributed to the success of Dumplings.RU. He said that while Slavic cuisines won't get the same reputation in Singapore as more popular national fares like Italian or Japanese, these restaurants will "survive."

"People are curious. There are very few competitors, and by a magical stroke of luck they are doing very well," Seetoh said. "There may be an uptick because people feel for them, people feel like they're eating and helping at the same time," he added, referring to the wave of near-global support for Ukrainians.

As for Zubovskyy, he said the work continues.

"We're trying our best," he said. "We're also affected by the politics, by this crisis as well," he added.