Beets, sweet tubers with a bright colour and a tender-crisp texture, play a significant role in Ukrainian cuisine. Many appetizers, soups, salads, and other simple dishes of Ukraine feature cooked or fermented beets as a main or complementing ingredient. Beets are native to the Ukrainian land, where they were cultivated in peasants’ vegetable gardens already hundreds of years ago.
Borscht, a deep red beet and cabbage soup, is popular all around Ukraine. The recipe might slightly differ by regions, but the main ingredients still remain the same - cabbage, beets, potatoes, onions, garlic, sour cream, and dill. Depending on a season, borscht can be served hot and cold, with cold varieties often being light or vegetarian.
You have to approach a restaurant named “Exotica” with slightly raised eyebrows. Making my way to Pier 6, off Naberezhno-Khreshchatytska, images flashed through my mind of sushi served on the recumbent bodies of naked women or a smoky Kyiv cabaret. (more…)
FILMS
“Breakfast on Pluto”
“Strange boy” Cillian Murphy stars as the much stranger character Patrik “Kitten” Braden in a movie by Irish director Neil Jordan whose most famous work to day is “Interview with the Vampire. (more…)
Don’t be fooled by the bare wide parking lot as you approach Spasska pier, to which Khutorok is moored. (You can also arrive on foot, walking along the Dnipro from Poshtova Ploscha metro station, as we did, or along Skovorody street from Kontraktova Ploscha.) As soon as you descend toward the restaurant, you enter another world. (more…)
Kyiv is a city that rarely misses an opportunity to remind us just how eclectic it really is. The Pechersk district, whose visual landscape boasts an abundant array of new high-end real estate and also some of the city’s most recognizable Soviet and Orthodox
cultural and historical monuments, (more…)
With summer looming and the first days of real heat expected any time now, the beer season in Kyiv can be officially considered open (though when or whether it officially closes is another matter altogether). (more…)
Okay, let’s get this out of the way now: Nobu is overpriced. It just is. A single piece of yellowtail will run you almost $5 and a six-piece California roll with only a fake crabstick and vegetables inside will cost you about $13. What’s more, the only sake (Japanese rice wine) they sell is Hr 140 for 150 grams. (more…)
All of us on the Post editorial team used to love this place (everyone knew what was meant by “at Chinese.”) First of all, it was conveniently situated downstairs next to our office; secondly, it served decent ethnic food for very modest prices – a combination rarely found within the Kyiv restaurant scene. (more…)
The Kyiv Post has once again joined with The Ukrainian Connoisseur Club (TUCC) in an attempt to objectively quantify new and existing restaurants according to an established standard for fine dining in Ukraine. Approximately once a month the not-for-profit TUCC selects a Kyiv restaurant, and, on April 6, (more…)
