Trip to Donetsk, Ukrainian Food

Donetsk is halfway between Zaporizhia and Lugansk, the two cities we have already traveled to this month, so it will feel like familiar territory as we travel there tonight; a driver will be waiting to take us another 90 minutes out of the city. As in the rest of eastern Ukraine, Russian is the primary language, which will be make it much easier for us to communicate with the children. The town we will be in, Thorez, is actually only 15 miles from Russia.

I will be hard-pressed to do Ukrainian food justice in a blog post. It has always been important to me, since my favorite food growing up was vareniki, one of several Ukrainian staples that have been in my mother's family since her great-grandparents were all born here; cabbage borscht and stuffed cabbage rolls also hit our table occasionally. I am on a mission this month to sample as many kinds of vareniki as I can. They are basically what Americans know as perogies, and here they are usually eaten with smetana (a thin, tangy sour cream). So far I have gotten the following types (but there are dozens available in vareniki restaurants): meat, egg/veal liver/heart, cottage cheese, potatoes and mushrooms, potatoes and cheese, cheese and raisins, strawberries, bilberries, cherries, and mixed berries. Ukrainians also like to stuff blini (crepes) and pelmeni (wontons) with similar fillings and eat them with smetana. Come to think of it, they eat a lot of things here with smetana. Another good Ukrainian culinary proverb: "A pat of butter never made anything worse."

People close to me know that I make kefir every day at home, and I'm certainly not going without it here. It is served in restaurants and as easy to find in stores as milk. Most of it is pasteurized, but I've been choosing "bio-kefir" and loving it. It is available with different milkfat contents, too, but even the 1% is so rich and creamy you'd have to taste it to believe it!

Our week in Lugansk region was pretty wild, with something different going on every day, but we always were able to slow down comfortably when we got back to our hotel in its delightful Restaurant Mir. This place was a true haven, and it is my favorite restaurant in the world if you take both price and quality into account. It was decorated with nets, rigging, and fake sea creatures, the service was very professional and friendly, and I would qualify the quality and presentation as gourmet. The menu was so deep that I didn't come close to trying half of the things that looked good in a full 7 days, surely the longest sequence of daily spectacular food that I have had except at Mayca's mother's house in Spain.

What is more, I don't think we ever ordered any dish more expensive than $4; that was the price of most of the seafood dishes, otherwise they were $2 or $3. Here is Julie showing off some cheese curd cakes covered with jam (it is always runny in Ukraine) and smetana.

Another side benefit of being in Europe is that excellent western European cuisine is also available. We have had Italian gelato twice and homemade pasta twice in very authentic restaurants, and across from Saint Andrew's Church and the SDA is a French cafe that could honestly have been teleported from Montmartre (except for Ukrainian staff and bilingual Ukrainian menus). We have also found an amazing variety of seafood in addition to the obligatory caviar; sushi restaurants are everywhere, although we have not tried that here yet.

My favorite soup is okroshka, a creamy, lukewarm cucumber and meat soup flavored with dill. It is pictured here with some delicious vareniki and smetana from Puzata Khata (literally, fat-belly hut), a ubiquitous cafeteria-style chain with tremendous selection where most dishes cost $1 or $1.50.

My baked pike perch dish with Julie's beef medallions in background. Note the "Khortitzya" brand on ashtray: the name of the Mennonite colony that included all the villages we saw, and also the most popular brand of vodka in eastern Ukraine.

Ukrainians normally order a multi-course lunch, and the menus are divided into soup, salad, first course, and main course. There is a section just for sides, and these are paid for separately, even things like smetana and bread; also, every item on the menu indicates exactly how much you get in grams or milliliters, which is very useful. The courses seem to be discrete phases of the meal; once when Julie ordered a soup and a sandwich while I ordered a first and second, we got our food staggered and took turns watching the other eat! A fixed price menu like this one let us get one of a few selections for each course for just $4.50.