Travel to Kyiv, and eat your way around the world via its fine restaurants (05/04/03)

A Ukrainian Summer: where to go, what to do...

Travel to Kyiv, and eat your way around the world via its fine restaurants

by Roman Woronowycz
Kyiv Press Bureau

KYIV - If Ukraine is on your summer vacation itinerary, undoubtedly that means a stop in Kyiv, the political and cultural capital of the country. While today this city of nearly 3 million inhabitants is internationally known for its historic churches and museums, it may also have a future as a center of fine dining.

Although little-known and even less discussed, Kyiv has a number of delightful gastronomic landmarks, on par with any other European capital, which tourists to Ukraine should make part of their tour plans when on a trip to Ukraine.

True, before the transformations of the last decade, Kyiv was a barren wasteland of culinary cuisine. Kyivans and visitors to the capital had practically nothing to choose from in terms of quality eating establishments. Cafés and restaurants with drab names served nondescript and forgettable food to customers who didn't expect or demand much, except for plenty of cheap vodka, perhaps. A slab of over-cooked pork, a salad drenched in mayonnaise and the requisite 100 grams of the clear stuff was for most a satisfactory business lunch or a nice evening out.

The sensibilities and the culinary expectations of Kyivan restaurant-goers have become vastly more Europeanized in the last decade. Kyiv's entrepreneurs and restaurants, in turn, have responded well and even led the way forward in many cases.

"Kyiv has seen quite a change in the quality and the style of restaurants lately, and it is only going to get better," explained Suzanna Burman of the Kyiv Restaurant Guild.

There are more than 2,000 restaurants and cafes located in Kyiv today, about 300 of them gourmand establishments, and more than half of those specialists in ethnic fare, according to the Kyiv Restaurant Guild. While Michelin, the highly respected restaurant guide and review to the best restaurants in the world, has yet to grade the Kyiv food scene, it does not mean that local restaurants do not offer some of the best dining in the world.

Today, eateries with outstanding reputations - and prices, we should add - dot the Kyiv culinary landscape, dishing up high-quality food and serving world-class wines. Among them Kyiv's current rave restaurant, Egoist, as well as the nouvelle cuisine kitchens of Le Grand Café, the Concorde and Surpryz.

The food is prepared by demanding young and innovative chefs competing to make their mark and their reputation, including Volodymyr Yadlovsky of Egoist, Valentyna Kuchar of Tsarske Selo and Denys Komarenko of Surpryz. Mr. Komarenko, who is considered the dean of the new generation of chefs, has succeeded in achieving international renown in a little over a decade.

There is also an abundance of top-end Ukrainian kitchens serving nouveau Ukrainian and Kozak fare, in addition to the still-popular standards demanded by tourists: borsch with pampushky, potato pancakes, varenyky and holubtsi. Ms. Burman explained that what makes the Ukrainian cuisine served at these eating establishments notable is that they each bring something different and unusual to the fare they offer.

"There are no restaurants that serve pure Ukrainian cuisine today," explained Ms. Burman. "Through innovations and additions by the chefs, they are slowly changing the established traditions."

Kyiv restaurants serving Ukraine's ethnic nouvelle cuisine, where the motif and the music nonetheless remain 19th century village traditional, include Khutorets, Tsarske Selo, Kobzar, Kozak Mamai and Hostynnyi Dvir. They do a huge summer business among tourists and keep going through the off-season months by appealing to Kyivans longing for a bit of home-style cooking.

Yet, what puts today's Kyiv restaurant scene on a world-class level is the wide variety of ethnic restaurants. There are American grills, French bistros, Italian ristorante and pizzerias, Japanese steakhouses, and dining establishments offering Indian, Chinese, Mexican and Argentinean cuisine. Walk the streets of downtown Kyiv and you will routinely see restaurants beneath neon signs carrying none-too-Ukrainian names like El Asador Taberna and Grill, Hanoi Restaurant, Mimino, Arizona BBQ, Sam's Steak House, San Tori, and Pantagruel.

Leading the pack of notable ethnic restaurants for some time now is San Tori - a combination Thai and Japanese restaurant, which serves the differing fares in separate rooms of a second-floor establishment located on Kontraktova Square in the Podil district of Kyiv.

San Tori was the creation of co-owners Marina and Falk Nebiger, who decided on the combination for their second Kyiv restaurant while on a dining tour of Frankfurt. The two, who are married, thought they could make a dent in the Kyiv restaurant scene by combining the two internationally recognized and loved Asian cuisines, while accenting an Asian fusion menu as well.

The couple and their restaurant form an interesting, self-contained ethnic melting pot: while Marina is half Moroccan and half Russian, and Falk is German, they live in Ukraine, where they own a restaurant specializing in Japanese and Thai food. Now add to that international mix the fact that the first restaurant they opened in Kyiv was the Tex-Mex-style restaurant Arizona BBQ (more about that later), and you realize they have brought a very interesting potpourri of gastronomic expertise to the city.

When San Tori opened in 1996, there was not a single restaurant carrying either Japanese or Thai fare on its menu. Interestingly enough, generally conservative and cautious Ukrainians took to the restaurant quickly - in part, Marina explained, because the heavy accent in the menu on fish, a favorite food among Ukrainians - and soon people were queuing to get into the restaurant.

"When we opened 70 percent of our clients were foreigners and 30 percent Ukrainians, but very quickly that changed around to exactly the opposite," explained Marina, who is also the restaurant's manager.

Today San Tori, which means sizzling bird in the Thai language, continues to be popular among Kyivans and is almost always found on any serious list of the city's top 10 restaurants.

Sushi and sashimi are the most popular items on the menu, along with Japanese Miso soup and the whole spectrum of Thai soups. However, a visit to the restaurant would not be complete without trying an appetizer from the Thai selection (we recommend chicken roasted in banana leaves, served with a sweet sesame sauce) or something from the fusion menu (another suggestion: the roasted magrit of duck with sautéed pear in spicy red wine and ginger confit. You could not go wrong either, if you tried the Papaya Salad, the Japanese Sea Bass the Thai Red Snapper or one of the luscious desserts, which include deep-fried bananas and Thai coconut pudding.

As noted earlier, the Nebigers have become a pillar of Kyiv's restaurant scene. Before San Tori, they started with Arizona BBQ, which specializes in Tex-Mex cooking. Around for eight years, it is already a legendary landmark within the party-loving U.S. expatriate set.

Its bar - with satellite-wired television broadcasting events direct from the U.S. - is the center of action during U.S. "national sports holidays," such as Super Bowl Sunday and the World Series. But what makes the place a great hangout is the food. Its delicious entrée selections and spicy appetizers - equal parts Texas beef and barbecue and Mexican corn tortillas, beans and rice - make it a popular eating place for Ukrainians and Europeans alike and a necessary rest stop for every American still not hardened against that yearning for a bit of home.

Ms. Burman said that warmth and good service are what make Arizona BBQ memorable. "People feel at home there," she explained.

Perhaps Kyiv's most intriguing ethnic restaurant is the El Asador, which features of all things, Argentinean cuisine. You could ask, what is an Argentinean restaurant doing in Kyiv? And you could answer with the obvious: A Ukrainian immigrant to Buenos Aires who returned home must own it. But you would be wrong.

Chef Antonio Ruiz of El Asador refused to tell us who, in fact, is the owner of this traditional taberna and grill, but he did assure us it was an ethnic Argentinean.

The restaurant serves the grilled foods developed on the Argentinean Pampa, the open prairie grassland that makes up much of the geographic landscape of the country, which was historically inhabited by Argentinean gauchos and their herds of livestock.

But Argentinean-born Chef Antonio, who was trained in the kitchens of Paris and Milan and spent two years in Moscow before taking his current position in Kyiv, assured us that he does not have to order his food items from back home because most everything that is needed - except for a few varieties of spices - can be found in Ukraine.

Chef Antonio said his most popular dish is la Cumparsita, better known to us as barbecued veal tenderloin, which Ukrainians increasingly will order medium rare to his great satisfaction, as opposed to well done, which was the only way they wanted their meat cooked until not long ago.

The chef is in step with the emphasis on artistic presentation currently popular in the culinary world. He showed a dish he called vegetable rainbow, consisting of zucchini, eggplant, onion and tomatoes in a honey mustard sauce, arranged to create a spectrum of dark blue, green, yellow and white hues. He also offered his award-winning dessert, called Pasion, which consists of strawberries and crème with ground peppercorns in a sugar cone shell.

Another well-loved Kyiv ethnic restaurant is the Mimino, which serves Georgian cuisine, long popular among the sophisticated set in Kyiv. Named for a much-watched movie from the Soviet era, the word itself means "hawk" in the Georgian language. The food is as wild as the name implies. The Georgian kitchen is very similar to Greek, Turkish and Armenian cuisine, heavy on hot spices and grilled lamb. In a Georgian eatery, however, there is the added delight of the thick and rich Georgian wines, and this restaurant offers up quite a selection.

Food and service in Kyiv's restaurants have attained a consistent quality that was lacking in earlier years. In the first half of the 1990s, problems could arise in simply obtaining the quality produce and ingredients needed to prepare the exotic dishes some restaurants offered.

Even in the last few years, what you expected was still not always what you got as restaurants were forced to improvise when a deficit of one thing or another occurred in the local market or with international deliveries. Ever had a burrito with shredded cabbage instead of lettuce? One Kyiv restaurant that claimed to specialize in Mexican fare was forced to make that change back in 1998 when it ran out of lettuce one day.

Although the situation has vastly improved, in the 1990s some vegetables commonly found in European and U.S. groceries, such as romaine lettuce, were not often seen in Ukraine's markets. When a chef unexpectedly ran out of avocados, he couldn't simply have a dishwasher or busboy run out to a local store to pick some up to tide him over until the next delivery came. Today the selection and the freshness of vegetables are much improved, even though some of the most exotic stuff is not easily obtainable in Kyiv.

Service is another area in which marked improvements are discernible. Today a waiter or a waitress understands that service means "when the customer wants it," not "when I am ready to work." There is another side to that equation that has changed as well. Whereas a few years back tipping was not generally expected or required, today if you don't leave at least 10 percent with your bill - which in many Kyiv restaurants you can't get around anyway because it is automatically added to the check - you will get a stare as ugly and unsettling as any dissatisfied French or Italian waiter could deliver.

Nonetheless, when taking the whole Kyiv restaurant scene under consideration there are still a couple of things the city still lacks. Most notably, as Ms. Burman of the Kyiv Restaurant Guild observed, there is a very obvious need for more affordable restaurants, especially of the family type. True, Kyiv - and Ukraine in general - has its share of McDonald's and even a recently opened TGIF's. The country also has a few of its own quickly developing fast food chains, such as the increasingly popular Shvydko brand. But there are few restaurants where you can take the family for a leisurely and relatively inexpensive quality meal. That needs to change, according to Ms. Burman.

"There are many people who can afford to eat out, but they don't because it is simply not the right atmosphere for a family get-together. They still have their family gatherings at home or at the cottage," explained Ms. Burman.

For visitors from Europe or North America, more accustomed to eating in a wide variety of styles and service, this is generally not an issue. Also, the euro and the dollar go a very long way here, and so the term "expensive" carries a discounted meaning. Perhaps it is time that Ukraine gets its tourism industry off the ground by promoting its Kyiv restaurants. After all, if the rich in North America can fly to Paris on a whim for a bit of French cooking, why not to Kyiv?

Anyone for dyruny (potato pancakes)? Or how about mandarin duck?

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