International Deruny Festival

Held annually in the city park of Korosten, a historic northern Ukrainian town on the Uzh River once the capital of the ancient Slavic Drevlyan tribe, the International Deruny Festival has celebrated the humble potato pancake since its first edition in 2008, when organisers baked a 118-kilogram deruny using 100 kilograms of potatoes. The festival has since grown enormously, drawing tens of thousands of visitors to what has become one of the more good-humoured food events anywhere in Ukraine.

At the centre of the festivities is the deliberately silly 'potato pancake triathlon', combining events like squatting while holding heavy jugs of pancakes, throwing deruny into a bowl of sour cream from five metres away, and pancake-throwing contests between competitors. A dedicated potato pancake school teaches visitors the proper technique, while the festival's main culinary competition invites chefs from a rotating cast of countries — past editions have featured Belarusian, English, French, Norwegian, Polish, Spanish and Georgian interpretations of the potato pancake alongside the traditional Ukrainian version, giving the humble dish a genuinely international showcase.

Given Korosten's more than thousand-year history and its more recent experience of the ongoing war, the festival's continued celebration of something as simple and communal as the potato pancake carries a particular significance — a tradition the town has fought to keep alive alongside its own recovery and rebuilding.