The story
Two women, one family,
a new start at the stove.
The Stepanenkos are from Kharkiv, in north-east Ukraine, close to the Russian border, and were living in Kyiv when the full-scale invasion began. Then they left Ukraine: a year in a rented house in Stuttgart, where Anastasiia finished high school, and in 2023 a new home in Ottawa.
In Ottawa the first kitchen job came through her mother. Nataliia took a management position at Rideau Gymnastics in Kanata, came up with themed camps for children and chose her daughter to coach the cooking camp. One summer was enough. At 17 Anastasiia registered her own children's cooking studio, Cookiddoo, and paid for it herself.
She told me I would be the coach of the cooking camp and after the first summer, I decided I loved it.
The bigger dream is older. At four, Anastasiia told her parents she was leaving for Paris to open a restaurant with every kind of cuisine, and that it would be called the Polar Bear. Nataliia shared the dream of a food business of their own.
I had this huge idea that I’d build a skyscraper and every floor would have different cuisine; French, Chinese, Ukrainian and so on.
In the summer of 2026 mother and daughter made it real and started OH! Catering together: styled share tables for celebrations in Ottawa, and the Ukrainian home cooking they grew up with. They cook in a rented commercial kitchen, and that summer they took their first clients.
