The story
A cooking school started by a 17-year-old newcomer
Anastasiia Stepanenko is from Kharkiv. After the full-scale invasion her family moved to Kyiv, then spent a year in Stuttgart, where she finished high school, and came to Ottawa in 2023. She went on to Earl of March Secondary School in Kanata.
Her first class was a summer cooking camp at Rideau Gymnastics in Kanata, where she was the cooking coach. After that summer she rented a room in the same building and registered Cookiddoo at 17. She is the sole founder and paid for the start herself.
Today Anastasiia is 19 and has been running her own cooking classes for children for two years. Kids aged 4 to 15 cook real meals from scratch with their own hands: fresh pasta, pastry, yeast dough. Groups stay small, up to ten children per instructor. This fall she launched the Junior Chef Academy, an eight-week course her students asked for.
She has dreamed of her own restaurant since she was four, and she keeps training at Le Cordon Bleu in pastry and French cuisine.
I'm also super proud of myself for inspiring kids, for giving them the knowledge to do it by themselves and for giving them the love of cooking.
Anastasiia Stepanenko, Edible Ottawa, May 2026
