For many — Ukrainians and non-Ukrainians alike — Ukrainian cuisine might seem the antithesis of fine dining: greasy and meaty comfort food, the provenance of moms and grandmothers. The owners of the Ukrainian neo-bistro Mriya, which means “dream” in Ukrainian, located in central London, share anything but this perspective. Opening after the
For the nearly two-thirds of Ukrainians who identify as Orthodox Christians, Easter is known as Velykden, meaning “Great Day” in Ukrainian. The Orthodox Church of Ukraine calculates the date of Easter according to the revised Julian calendar. It falls on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the
If there is one institution in Ukraine impervious to the sweeping decommunization efforts of the last decade, it’s the Soviet-era canteen, or stolovaya as it’s usually referred to in Russian. An invention of the Soviet Union’s founding father Vladimir Lenin, the stolovaya (called yidalnia in Ukrainian) was
There’s nothing sweeter than home, unless you’re a Kyivan — because then you have Kyiv Cake. While many foreigners associate the city with the butter-filled chicken cutlet known as Chicken Kyiv, which is likely of French origin, the layers of nutty meringue and buttercream coated with crushed hazelnuts that
In 1584, a German merchant traveled to Kyiv, at the time under the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. In his diary, he mentions borsch—the earliest known reference to the dish. But according to historical records, Ukrainians have been eating and adapting a dish known as borsch for at least 1,200 years.
