FOOD & DRINK
FROM UKRAINE TO HOT SPRINGS
ALEXA’S CREPERIE IS A FAMILY-OWNED EUROPEAN CAFE THAT HAS SPANNED 15 YEARS AND TWO CONTINENTS. BY RHETT BRINKLEY PHOTOGRAPHY BY BRIAN CHILSON
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n late March, just a few days after President Biden announced the U.S. would be accepting up to 100,000 refugees fleeing Ukraine, Alexa’s Creperie announced on its Facebook page that it would be temporarily closing for a family emergency. Husband and wife Sergiy and Yana Polyakov, owners of the European-style cafe at 238 Cornerstone Blvd. in Hot Springs, got news that they needed to buy a plane ticket for Yana’s mother, a Ukrainian refugee, and head to San Diego to meet her. And they needed to do it right away. “We talked to immigration lawyer and they said, ‘You need to right now because there are already 70,000 going,’ ” Sergiy said, recalling the experience. “I say ‘OK.’ We drive. Twenty-six hours.” Yana is from the Poltava region of central Ukraine. Sergiy was born in the city of Donetsk when it was a part of the Soviet Union. Donetsk is located in eastern Ukraine now, but it’s also known as a separatist region referred to as Donetsk People’s Republic. “It’s honestly two different nationalities of Ukrainian,” he said. “I’m Russian, she’s
68 MAY 2022
ARKANSAS TIMES
FAMILY CREPERIE: Yana Polyakov (left) and Sergiy Polyakov opened Alexa’s Creperie in Brussels in 2006 and moved it to Hot Springs in 2015.
Ukrainian, but we’re OK. It’s not important what side of Ukraine you are, it’s more important who are you,” he said. When the Russian invasion of Ukraine began Feb. 24, the Polyakovs worried. Yana’s mother was still there, and so were Yana’s brother, his wife and their child. “It was really difficult,” Sergiy said. Not only is there an eight-hour time difference, but connecting with people in Ukraine was impossible at times because communication towers were down, he said. “I texted and when I don’t receive messages back, I start to worry about what’s happened. I need to wait ’til after midnight. That’s why it’s one month no sleep, stress, I lose 25 pounds,” he said. Hot Springs residents became aware of the situation and offered to make donations to the family. Gear Factory, a local custom T-shirt company, offered to help Sergiy figure out how to channel the donations and started an online fundraiser. Yana’s brother’s family is still in Ukraine. “He’s military, he can’t leave,” Sergiy said. “We try to send money, we try to help.” Yana’s mother, Asiia Kochurova, left Ukraine
and traveled through parts of Romania, Hungary and Slovenia before arriving in Poland. “She take train, she takes car, everywhere I have friends meet her. It’s a horrible time,” Sergiy said. “It was two weeks for this distance.” A 4,000-PLUS MILE RESTAURANT RELOCATION Sergiy and Yana opened Alexa’s Creperie in Brussels in 2006, the same year their daughter, Alexandra, was born. In 2012, Sergiy’s sister invited him to her wedding. “I said, ‘Where are you located?’ She told me Arkansas’s Hot Springs. I go, ‘What are you doing in the middle of the country?’ ” After attending the wedding and seeing the natural beauty of Hot Springs, Sergiy said he understood why and wondered, why not move to the United States? “In Brussels, huge city, payment for parking, payment for everything, traffic, you running all day from 6 in the morning to midnight,” he said. The Polyakovs immigrated to the U.S. in 2014 and brought their restaurant with them, opening on Marian Anderson Road near Lake Hamilton in 2015. In December 2019 they opened a second
