Vitaliia Veselovska: when precision becomes creativity

2026.10.07

In pastry, creativity always goes hand in hand with precision. A temperature, a texture, a proportion, or just a few seconds can completely change the outcome. Yet it is precisely within these boundaries that Vitaliia Veselovska has built a professional career spanning more than two decades.

Currently leading the pastry department at KADORR Restaurant in Odesa, Veselovska has 24 years of experience in the profession, 18 of them in leadership positions as an Executive Pastry Chef. Her career has been shaped by technique, aesthetics, and an approach to desserts in which precision can also become a form of creative expression.

On November 16, that experience will arrive in Madrid. Veselovska will represent Ukraine as one of the eight international finalists in World’s Creative Chef by Fagor Professional, a competition that seeks to explore how far culinary creativity can go when technique, innovation, and technology are placed at the service of an idea.

A career built through pastry

Twenty-four years in the profession offer the opportunity to see a craft from many different perspectives.

Vitaliia Veselovska’s professional career has developed primarily within the world of pastry, a discipline that requires a combination of technical knowledge, aesthetic sensitivity, and the ability to work with an exceptionally high level of precision.

Throughout her career, she has worked as a pastry chef at several establishments, including Santorini, Ibiza, and Salieri, while also taking responsibility for managing pastry operations within major restaurant groups.

Of her 24 years of professional experience, 18 have been spent in leadership positions as an Executive Pastry Chef. This progression involves not only creating, but also organising processes, ensuring consistency, coordinating teams, and making sure that an idea can be reproduced to the same exacting standard time and time again.

Her career is also closely connected to her country’s culinary community: Veselovska is an honorary member of the Association of Chefs of Southern Ukraine.

In her case, creativity comes after many years spent mastering the craft.

Creating within the boundaries of precision

There is one particular characteristic that sets pastry apart from many other culinary disciplines: before breaking certain rules, you first need to understand them extremely well.

Temperatures, proportions, timings, structures, and textures leave little room for improvisation. And yet, the final result must be capable of conveying precisely the opposite: lightness, naturalness, and emotion.

Much of Veselovska’s work can be understood within this tension between control and freedom.

Her current work includes the creation of premium desserts, signature cakes, and contemporary mousse creations, where aesthetics form an integral part of the creative process itself.

Because a dessert begins long before it reaches the table.

Behind every creation lies an architecture: different textures that must coexist, temperatures that determine how ingredients behave, carefully balanced flavours, and a visual composition that must work without overshadowing what truly matters — the experience of the person tasting it.

Technique sets the boundaries. Creativity decides what to do within them.

KADORR: creating by the Black Sea

Today, that work continues at KADORR Restaurant in Odesa, where Vitaliia Veselovska leads the pastry department.

Located on French Boulevard and offering panoramic views of the Black Sea, KADORR forms part of a hotel and gastronomic complex designed around a premium dining experience.

The restaurant combines classical aesthetics with a broad culinary offering and an open kitchen where the cooking process itself becomes part of the guest experience.

Within this setting, Veselovska develops a contemporary approach to pastry in which technique and presentation necessarily move forward together.

Signature cakes, desserts, and mousse creations form part of a body of work in which aesthetics are not simply decorative. Visual construction becomes an extension of technique itself.

Colour, volume, shine, texture, and geometry become culinary tools.

It is an approach to dessert that connects directly with one of the principles at the heart of World’s Creative Chef: gastronomy as a discipline capable of approaching the language of art without losing the technical rigour that supports it.

Experience as a starting point for creativity

After more than two decades working in pastry, competing presents a different kind of challenge.

It is no longer simply about demonstrating mastery of a technique. Accumulated experience makes something more complex possible: using that knowledge as a tool to develop a distinctive voice.

This combination of knowledge and the ability to transform it will be one of the defining elements of the World’s Creative Chef final.

Created by Fagor Professional, the competition seeks to recognise professionals capable of taking gastronomy into new territories through creativity, innovation, aesthetic sensitivity, and the ability to transform an idea into an experience.

The eight selected finalists come from different countries and represent different cultures and approaches to cuisine. On November 16, they will have to translate their personal vision into a creation capable of demonstrating not only technical mastery, but also intention.

For Veselovska, approaching the challenge through pastry introduces an additional perspective.

Working with sugar, chocolate, fruit, doughs, creams, or mousses means accepting a very specific set of physical rules — and then searching within them for something unexpected.

Ukraine, on the road to Madrid

Vitaliia Veselovska’s presence in the final also carries another dimension.

On November 16, she will arrive in Madrid representing Ukraine, bringing with her a career built over 24 years and developed largely in Odesa.

That day, World’s Creative Chef will bring together eight different ways of understanding gastronomy around a single question: what does it really mean to be creative in a professional kitchen?

In Veselovska’s case, perhaps part of the answer can be found precisely in the discipline to which she has devoted her career.

Pastry demonstrates that creativity and precision are not opposing concepts.

That a deep understanding of technique does not necessarily limit the possibilities for creation — it can multiply them.

And that, even after more than two decades spent perfecting a craft, there is still room to face a blank canvas.

On November 16 in Madrid, Vitaliia Veselovska will have another opportunity to do exactly that in the final of World’s Creative Chef by Fagor Professional.

This time, she will bring with her 24 years of experience, the precision of pastry, and a question that lies at the very heart of the competition: how far can an idea go when you have the technical expertise to turn it into reality?