WASHINGTON – Combine three parts whole milk and one part sour cream in a bowl. Then, place the mixture in a durable, medium-sized pot on low heat, and stir gently until curds form. After a few minutes, fetch a cheesecloth, strain the blend in a large dish, and let it rest.
In Southeastern Europe, cottage cheese is a feature of the region’s gastronomic profile, and for Belarusian cafe owner Aksana Tran, it’s a keepsake from her home under sanctions.
“Natural color, natural taste… I give my guests this food, I can give my children this food, (it’s) something you wouldn’t be afraid to feed (someone),” Tran, 51, said, looking to a spread of government buildings across from her shop’s patio. “I feed all my family.”
These days, Tran caters to a new family: her customers. Alongside a team of Belarusians and Ukrainians, she shares her culture from her restaurant Sweet Lemon Cafe, just a few minutes’ walk from the United States Capitol.
Early Years in the Minsk Region
About an hour away from the capital of Belarus in the quaint town of Stolbtsy, Tran lived a simple life.
Her mother was a midwife and her father was a railroad engineer. But after they married and moved cities, her mother quit a demanding post in reproductive care, turning to selling railroad tickets.
While Tran’s parents worked, she and her two younger sisters tended to the family’s small patches of farmland intermittently between school — and for Tran, skiing practice. But it was a minimal reprieve.
Belarus’ icy terrain made a prime arena for the winter sport. Tran skied throughout middle school and high school, and during the off-season, she worked at her parents’ summer house growing vegetables.
The countryside holds a populace of farmers and older citizens, and it’s customary for city dwellers to return to the pastures to cull produce with their families. Secondary property was not for rest, but a branch to maximize crops, according to Tran. She recalls her routine once she returned from the slopes: unpack and head to the steadings.
“After I’d come back from training, (I’d) help my parents with work at the farm. It was quite (a) hard childhood, but it’s still your childhood and you remember it.”
Beginnings Overseas
Years passed and Tran’s family changed. Her youngest sister immigrated to the United States and landed in Massachusetts, leaving behind her family.
While on a vacation from her job as an economist to visit her sister in the States, Tran, and her sister toured the nation’s capital to see the National Mall and explore the city’s museum scene.
It was a hot day, and they’d gone into a crowded Starbucks on Dupont Circle to refresh themselves. Surveying the cafe, Tran spotted a man at a partially vacant round table and asked if they could sit.
She and her sister joined him and conversation sparked over his curiosity about what language the two were speaking. Tran said Russian. He invited them to lunch but they declined – they had a flight to catch back to Massachusetts, although, they’d later recant after an abrupt schedule change.
“We went to (the) hotel and the company called saying, ‘Your flight is canceled,’’’ Tran said. “Because we took a picture with him before and we sent the picture to him, she (her sister) had his phone number. We texted him asking if he was still available because now we were available.”
From that mild afternoon at a Japanese restaurant, Tran and the man talked for three years while she lived in Belarus and he lived in Washington. They married in July seven years ago and after a placeholder job as a felter in Alexandria, Virginia, Tran invested in her true passion.
Stumbling upon a closing eatery on Massachusetts Avenue not far from the United States Capitol, Tran bought the property. At a roundtable dinner with her husband and two daughters, Tran decided on the name Sweet Lemon Cafe, hired a crew of Southeastern European women, and formulated a menu integrating her homeland food with American comfort dishes.
The Russo-Ukrainian War
Parallel to a myriad of dog pictures gifted to Tran by her customers is a menu offering traditional East Slavic dishes like borscht, a ruby red meat-and-vegetable soup, and goulash, a spiced beef and noodle stew.
On another wall of the cafe hangs a Ukrainian flag, partly covered by a beverage machine.
The outbreak of the Russo-Ukrainian War on Feb. 24, 2022, left 3.7 million Ukrainians internally displaced, 14.6 million in need of humanitarian aid, and 6.5 million people as refugees as of last month, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Tran gave an interview to the radio network Voice of America, expressing her support for Ukraine. She said her public opposition to Russia bars her return to Belarus because she would be arrested.
Her home country is under American sanctions following long-term Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s falsification of the country’s 2020 election and suppression of political opposition. Her mother passed away last year and her father and younger sister are still in Stolbtsy.
In the back of the cafe is cook Viktoriia Protensko, 51, who fled Odessa, the third most populous city in Ukraine, to live with her daughter in Washington.
“Every day, bombs and kamikaze drones fly in Odessa,” Protensko said.
It was a difficult decision to leave.
Protensko found Sweet Lemon Cafe while searching for jobs after arriving in the nation’s capital. Her mother’s age made it difficult for her to uproot overseas, and the Ukrainian draft, which requires conscription for men between ages 27 and 60, drew her 46-year-old brother into the war.
Protensko speaks to them every day and hopes that at the end of the war, Ukraine will remain an independent country.
Anna Ramanaba is the first face at the cafe’s entrance. She takes and delivers orders, occasionally translating between English and Russian with Tran and Protensko.
The 22-year-old came to New York from Belarus two years ago to pursue an acting career. She discovered the cafe while transitioning between states, moving to Arlington, Virginia, to attend college.
The jump from the European to the American education system was chasmic, she said. Ramanaba studied criminal law in Belarus before dropping the profession and migrating to the States to follow an early dream, inspired by fictional teenage pop sensation Hannah Montana.
She reflects warmly on her home country, saying she misses the smell of frost when it’s about to snow and quality time with her younger sister, but discord drove her journey abroad.
Ramanaba, who’s biracial, endured discrimination in Belarus and looked to the diversity of the United States for career opportunities.
She said she knew more people in her home country who supported Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine than those who dissented. Disputes about the merits of the war inflamed relationships among Ramanaba’s professors, students, and her university’s administration. Some of the professors and students who objected to the war were expelled.
“I was very much a backseat student. I had my own views… mostly my opinions and theirs were clashing,” Ramanaba said. “When you went to the point of speaking up, (it) was not going to change anything.”
Tran stood up from her iron lawn chair to greet a customer and walked up the stairs to the cafe. She said she hopes to expand her business to a larger location in the neighborhood, where she’ll introduce new items to her menu. Reflecting on her travels until now, she said her food is her art, and she looks to the future.
“It’s a very difficult thing when you have this inspiration inside yourself, you like to do something, you like art, you like to create something, but you never had time for it,” Tran said. “…And so when I became free when I came here, I started all my time in this.”