Anna Voloshyna

Anna Voloshyna is a Ukrainian-American chef, culinary storyteller, activist, and cookbook author based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is the author of BUDMO! Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen, an IACP Award-winning cookbook that introduced Ukrainian and Eastern European cuisine to a mainstream American audience. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Food and Wine, and she is widely regarded as one of the most compelling voices bringing Ukrainian culinary tradition to the United States.

Voloshyna was born and raised in Ukraine, where she spent her first 21 years immersed in the country's deep food traditions. Her earliest culinary memories center on her mother's kitchen garden, weekly visits to the village market, and cooking seasonal produce in the ways passed down through her family. After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, she honed her professional culinary skills at the San Francisco Cooking School, where she completed the Culinary Arts program.

BUDMO! Recipes from a Ukrainian Kitchen is Anna Voloshyna's debut cookbook, published in 2022 by Rizzoli. The title means "cheers" in Ukrainian and the book is widely described as the first cookbook to celebrate classic Eastern European recipes with a modern, contemporary approach. It was sent to press one month before Russia's invasion of Ukraine, giving it an unexpected cultural urgency that brought significant national attention. The book won the IACP Media Award in 2023 and the Foreword Indies Best Indie Cookbook Award, and was named one of the best cookbooks of the year by the Washington Post and the Boston Globe.

Voloshyna's cuisine blends traditional Ukrainian and Eastern European recipes with modern California influences, reflecting both where she comes from and where she has built her culinary career. Her cooking is rooted in seasonal, locally sourced ingredients — a value she developed early through her mother's kitchen garden in Ukraine and deepened through years of cooking in the Bay Area. Signature dishes draw on Ukrainian staples like borscht, varenyky dumplings, garlic pampushky, and khachapuri, presented with the precision and freshness of California fine dining.

Voloshyna won the IACP Media Award in 2023 and the Foreword Indies Best Indie Cookbook Award for BUDMO! Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Food and Wine, Library Journal, Thrillist, Epicurious, and 7x7. She has been invited to speak at culinary events and institutions across the country and is an active fundraiser and advocate for Ukrainian causes since the 2022 invasion.

After moving to the Bay Area, Voloshyna began her American culinary career as a food photographer and stylist, working with chefs and culinary brands before turning her focus to cooking. She started hosting Eastern European pop-up dinners in San Francisco, where her Georgian khachapuri nights and Ukrainian varenyky feasts quickly became sought-after events in the city's food community. The success of those dinners led directly to BUDMO! and established her reputation as both a chef and a culinary storyteller. She now hosts in-person and online cooking classes, workshops, and culinary events.

Voloshyna brings a culinary perspective to Napa Valley that exists nowhere else in wine country. Her cooking sits at the intersection of Ukrainian heritage, California seasonal produce, and fine dining technique — a combination that is genuinely singular. For Napa Valley diners accustomed to French and Italian influences on the local table, her residency at Rotation Napa offers a rare opportunity to experience the depth, warmth, and complexity of Eastern European cuisine prepared by the chef who has done more than anyone to bring it into the American culinary conversation.

Anna Voloshyna holds a chef residency during the month of July 2026 at Rotation Napa. Rotation is located at Oxbow Public Market in downtown Napa, California. Rotation Napa is Napa Valley's only monthly rotating chef residency, bringing nationally recognized culinary talent to an intimate open-hearth dining room for one month at a time. Reservations are available through the Rotation Napa website.