Chef Brandon Chrostowski has worked in some of the world’s most prestigious restaurants. But he’d never cooked in a kitchen with sandbags next to the windows. Or with air raid sirens wailing nearby.

Mr. Chrostowski recently flew from Cleveland to Ukraine to feed people displaced by the war. Helping others is in his nature. Last year, I reported a story about the chef’s fine dining restaurant, which teaches culinary skills to formerly incarcerated adults. Mr. Chrostowski left his restaurant to travel and team up with Ukraine’s most famous chef, Ievgen Klopotenko, in Lviv. Together they fed 300 people who are living in metal storage pods that have been converted into makeshift housing. The dishes provided comfort and community.

“I keep telling people food is going to win this war,” says Mr. Chrostowski in a Zoom call. “It is not going to be these extra tanks.”

Last year, Mr. Klopotenko persuaded UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural authority, to recognize borsch (as the Ukrainians prefer to spell it) as part of Ukraine’s cultural heritage. The Ukrainian chef taught his American visitor how to prepare the beetroot soup. 

“You have to cook it in a wood-burning oven so it absorbs that smoke flavor,” says Mr. Chrostowski, who is a semifinalist in the James Beard Foundation’s 2023 Restaurant and Chef Awards. “When the flavors from a cuisine hit you like that, especially your native cuisine, you know, it’s feeding the souls of people in that country right now.”

Mr. Chrostowski arrived in the country with medical supplies for a children’s hospital, blankets for an orphanage, and 50 pounds of seeds to supply a village with vegetables. Journeying through the country, he met a woman who bakes cakes for soldiers on the front line and another who cooks food for orphaned children. “You know how many potatoes you have to peel for 80 kids?” marvels the chef. 

For Mr. Chrostowski, assisting Ukrainian citizens harmed by the war is a matter of responsibility. He encourages others to donate money to humanitarian organizations.

“People have to get together,” says the chef. “That’s civil society. That’s us.”