This story originally appeared as part of a series in our May 13-26 print edition. Read the rest of the series here and find where you can get a print edition near you here.
If you’ve ever had a pierogi in the Queen City, that’s probably thanks to James Beard finalist Sarah Dworak.
Until 2012, most Cincinnatians didn’t even know what a pierogi is, much less where to find one. That all changed when Dworak opened Babushka Pierogi inside Findlay Market out of a desire to inject some of her Eastern European heritage into the city’s culture.
“I just wanted to share the food I grew up eating. When I cook, it smells like my grandma’s house on Christmas and Easter. I’m not a trained chef at all. I didn’t go to culinary school. I’ve got no special knife skills. I just know very specifically about how to make Eastern European food,” she said.
She’s downplaying her expertise, of course. Fans of her Findlay Market stand know that plenty of restaurants and bars all over the Tri-State area already sell her food at their own establishments, like Covington gastropub Wunderbar or the Over-the-Rhine cocktail bar Longfellow.
She also owned and operated the popular Wodka Bar for several years, which famously touted elevated takes on her culture’s dishes—like caviar puff pastries and kielbasa—on its way to being named one of America’s best bars by Esquire Magazine. But that wasn’t enough for Dworak.
“I wanted to open up a fine-dining spot showcasing my culture … Eastern Europe is not really represented in fine-dining in the States. There’s like, one spot in Chicago and one in Portland,” she said. “I told my mentor I wanted to do something bigger, and she asked why I was worried. She was like, ‘You’re already doing it at Wodka Bar. You figured out how to serve 18 dishes out of a closet.'”
In late 2024, she closed Wodka Bar and opened Sudova, the high-class Eastern European restaurant she’d been dreaming of her whole life. A year and a half later, she’s being recognized as one of the best chefs in the country, as Dworak is the only female finalist at this year’s James Beard awards for Best Chef: Great Lakes. It’s a “surreal” experience for somebody who got into the field with a supposed “lack” of culinary expertise.
“I was telling my friends ‘in what world does this happen? Can you even imagine?’ I just got my red carpet instructions yesterday, and they’re telling me Getty Images is going to be taking my photo. And, like, Guy Fieri’s producer was DM’ing me, and the Beard Foundation was asking me if I had a PR person, and I was like… no?” she said, unable to even finish her sentence before erupting in boisterous laughter.
Nearly every dish at Sudova is a showstopper, to the point that we had to stop our interview several times because the kitchen smelled so good. For example, the halushki—a Polish dish made of caramelized cabbage, brown butter and spaetzle that was “our version of buttered noodles growing up,” Dworak said.
The medovik, a 12-layer Ukrainian honey cake, has a deceptive appearance; it looks as if it’s one of those cakes that are too rich to eat more than a single bite of, but it’s surprisingly light and airy despite being made with an extremely thick European sour cream called smetana. But the biggest jaw-dropper at Sudova is the kulebiaka, a giant Russian puff pastry filled to the brim with salmon, mushrooms and rice.
“It’s a beautiful dish I’ve put my own spin on. Normally, you’re supposed to pour butter into the middle. But there’s a lot of ornate dough work on ours and I thought that might get a little messy. I figured if we put some bearnaise with tarragon in a gravy boat on the side instead, it’ll be easier and more interesting,” she said. “Just cut off a slice and dump it on there!”
Dworak hopes people leave her restaurant with a “formed sense” of what Eastern European cuisine tastes like. It’s not just the food that reflects her culture at Sudova, either—service is warm and inviting in the way that a family member’s home would be, tapestries and old photos from the region line the restaurant’s walls, and a portrait of her grandmother greets guests as they come through the front door. In the middle of the restaurant, she has an enormous table from her other grandmother that’s been in their family for over 70 years.
“My mother’s mother had the table, and she’d host dinner parties where I’d help her cook. Now I still get to have dinner parties around her table. The picture of my dad’s mother from Ukraine over there at the host stand, she taught me how to make pierogi when I was very young. And then she died very young,” she said, before taking a beat.
“I miss her a lot. She was the inspiration for all of this.”
In the immediate future, Dworak is hard at work opening a second location directly next door, comparing it in scope and tone to the nearby cocktail bar Longfellow’s “Other Room.”
This new location will keep Sudova’s Eastern European flair but with a different set of cocktails and a focus on preserved foods—”smoked meats, sausages, kielbasa, sauerkraut, charcuterie boards, pickled vegetables, kimchi”—because preservation, especially pickling and fermenting, is a “massive” part of Ukrainian food culture.
While at the James Beard award ceremony, she’ll be walking the red carpet with the mentor who inspired her to open the restaurant in the first place. If she wins, she’ll thank her mentor and then the people who make everything possible: her staff.
“I think having good staff makes all the difference. I could not do any of this without all the help I get. Yes, the award is for my personal vision, but it’s because of all of us that show up every day and walk through these doors to make my vision come true,” she said.
Now that she’s finished the “hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life” by opening a restaurant, and has now received nationwide acclaim, she feels a renewed sense of self.
“We’re a year and a half in, and I can finally sit back and say ‘Okay, I did that. I am capable.’ And now I know I can keep going. For people like me, the ideas and the desire to grow and just be, never stops,” she said. “It’s not even that I don’t know anything else. I just know I can bet on myself.”
Sudova is located at 22 W Court St in Cincinnati, Ohio. For more information, visit their website.
This article appears in May 13-26, 2026.
