Inga Turman is a Ukrainian chef who has worked in the food industry most of her life. She discovered her love of baking by watching her grandmother making pastries, even falling asleep in the corner of the bakery when it got late. Even when she is on vacation, she visits bakeries and restaurants and asks to learn how they made their pastries. Her motto is, “Many nations, one taste.”
Inga studied professional cooking in Russia in the early 90s, after the fall of the Soviet Union. At the time, 13 countries including Ukraine, Russa, and Belarus came together to form the Commonwealth of Independent States. Now, as Ukraine defends itself against the Russian invasion, Inga has watched how the war has sown division in the Slavic community with great sadness. She has been very involved volunteering to help those who are fleeing the violence and choosing to relocate in the Portland area.
Inga had seen war long before the current conflict. In 1999, she was working as a chef in Yakutsk, Russia, when the Second Chechen War began. She was haunted by the images of the conflict and feared that her older children, who were almost adults, would be sent to war because of the country’s mandatory military service practices. To prevent that, she moved her family to the United States in 2000.
“My mom is Ukrainian, I was born in Ukraine, my dad is Georgian, and I lived in Russia,” Inga says. “It is very difficult for me to dissect these parts of myself and to give labels to all these nations and say someone is bad.”
Inga sees her work as a chef as a force for good, saying, “Food is something that unites us all and makes us be kinder to each other.”
After moving to Portland, she started her own business with her catering company Chef Inga and, later, White Sheep Bakery. She also started getting involved with Portland’s Slavic community, volunteering at Slavic Family Radio to host shows where she taught newcomers how to adapt local ingredients to cook their traditional foods.
In 2022, Inga had the opportunity to buy Euro Foods, a market in the Hazelwood neighborhood of Portland. The market has a fully functioning kitchen that she plans to use as her base of operations for her catering business and maybe, one day, a restaurant.
Inga is planning to change the name of the market to Cherry Hill Bakery (it is still Euro Foods at the time of writing). She got the idea after having multiple dreams about walking through a cherry tree orchard, and giving cherries out to smiling, happy people. She talked with the previous owner of Euro Foods and found out that they had been planning to change the name to Cherry Hill Deli before selling to Inga. She knew then that it was more than a coincidence, it was meant to be.
At Cherry Hill Bakery, you can find traditional eastern European baked goods and amazing cakes, Ukrainian food like borscht and varenyky, and treats from Russia, Georgia, and more.