Have a food story or recommendation? Email us at [email protected].
When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Artur and Iryna Yuzvik had just finished a vacation in the Dominican Republic. With flights back to their native Ukraine cancelled, they were stuck at J.F.K. airport in New York City. Iryna was five months pregnant with their first child. They decided to stay in the U.S. rather than take the risk of returning to a battle-ridden country to have a baby.
The war has dragged on, lasting longer than World War I and becoming the deadliest conflict in Europe since World War II. But Artur and Iryna were determined to continue building the lives they had begun in 2016 as the owners of a coffee roaster in Ukraine that they named Soloway, Ukrainian for a black bird “that wakes up with you every morning,” says Artur. As they transferred their ambitions to the U.S., the English “solo way,” forging one’s own path, also resonated. After months on the East Coast, they visited Chicago and decided that this rather than New York was the city in which they wanted to live and open a Soloway Coffee cafe…