 We have fresh salmon in the Palmeni. Oh, okay, she brought, uh-oh. Your conversation gets too dry. Uh-oh, she said our conversation was too dry, David, we gotta drink some more. Growing up in Kent, Washington, it took us a while to realize how diverse it was. And now I remember there was actually a lot of Eastern European immigrants from Russia, Ukraine, and Poland. I learned Russian curse words on the school bus rides home, and I ate Eastern European chocolate, but I had never tried the food. And on this channel, we're always trying to learn about everything, so we had to check out Zarevna and Veselka in New York City, especially since their cuisines might have a little more ancient influence from the Far East than I had originally thought. After all, half of Russia is in Asia, so what do we share? Let's find out. Hey, what's up, man? What's up, fellas? Yo, what's going on? How's it going? It's good, guys. Oh, man, why don't you introduce yourself? Yo, tell us where we're at. We're at Saryevna in the Lower East Side. I'm Chef Ricky Dolinsky, and I run this place with my wife Maria. What are you guys doing here? I saw an outside, it says New Russian. A lot of people have this misconception that Russian food is a shatabaka and a potato and you're good. So for us, we actually find a lot of personality in Russian cuisine. Like American food, it's regional, and it embodies a lot of what the immigrants that brought there and their cultures and how it's sort of mixed into the melting pot that is Russian food. Nice, and you yourself, you are like kind of like a mix of things, right? Yeah, so my father's of Slavic descent. I am married to my wife who's born and raised in Russia, and my mother's actually from Taiwan. How come the perception of Russian food is so that it's so simple? A lot of people in a lot of restaurants here in Europe, especially, I think serve a lot of Russian food that are classically Soviet food. They weren't focusing on the space race. They weren't focusing on the food race, right? For sure, yeah. Let's check it out. Let's go. All right, man, we are here. I wanna make sure I say this as well as I can. Saryevna. That is very good. Thank you. Man, we've been working on the Russian accent. I conjured my inner James Bond. We got our spread here. Let's start over here. Yeah, man, so what we have going on here, this is our Hatchapuri, okay? So this made here is leaving in-house with sourdough for three days. Traditionally, in the boat shape still, but we jazzed it up a bit with some brown butter, crab, aioli, and ajica. It has like a sort of an old bay crab cake vibe going on. Dude, this is kind of like popping IG, like 2020, 2019, it shut the game down, right? It totally did. Yeah, people were blowing up. What are the roots of this dish? So this is technically the national dish of Georgia. Georgia's really in this like fascinating place that almost like the media probably never thinks about, right? It's like in this, is it east, is it west? It's like right in the middle, right? Totally, and some people have said it's sort of like the last uncharted territory of Europe even. I'm just saying for the gram, the egg yolk is crucial. I'm sure that's also the tradition too. It is, and then the egg yolk mixed in and the cheese coming out, it's getting fellas. Let's do it. I don't know. Just rip it off at the end. Just do it, yeah, come on. You guys are brothers? Yeah, so now what you can do. Look at this bread. I've never seen you guys. Super fluffy. How's it going? Wow, that was amazing. That's good. I feel like that egg yolk did a lot too. It adds so much richness to the whole thing. Okay, we are moving on to the dumpling section. We're gonna shed some light on the history and what we got going on here. Dumplings are a big part of Eastern European culture. Vereniki can also be referred to as piernogis. It is our potato and caramelized dunions within toss it in sort of a brown butter, caramelized onion, pan sauce, and scallions. Basically, Russian ravioli. Vereniki. Vereniki. Mm, I feel good. Many dumplings. Okay, we got the sour cream here. We need the sour cream. Especially with the potato one, it almost was like you needed that with the potato. Remember the best baked potato you ever had? There was sour cream in it, I'm telling you. This one might be more in the Asian repertoire. So we use veal and pork. There is some juice from there, but not as much as a soup dumpling, but this is a good dumpling. So veal and pork, veal, paprika, pepper. How many? How many? Yeah. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's not minced. It's not as juicy as like shalombo. Actually, it still gives me kind of like that slight meatball vibe. You know how like when you open up a dumpling, usually the meat is still clung together. Yes, exactly. Obviously, I think dumpling meat, they generally put in some soy sauce and obviously more of the very East Asian like seasonings, but this is really good. More Western countries that have dumplings, they eat it differently. Whether it's like they put more like a gravy on top or they put more seasoning on top. Sure, more tea, yes, exactly. It would be cool if like maybe like the Chinese could have taken some influence from that and like incorporated into how we eat them. I would love to have an Asian dumpling with sour cream. Yeah, some jowl, jowl, jowl. Like instead of vinegar for the shalombo, it's something else. Hopefully we get to a point where food is no longer politicized. It should never be. And good food is just good food. You know about Russo-Korean food, right? Which is, I guess, is its own genre that hasn't probably made it to the US. It's interesting because Russia for a long period of time was kind of more like in Western Europe, right? And then over the past, what, 500 years, they've really pushed eastward. Yes. And now it's like this whole part that like half of Russia is in Asia. What do you know about like, I guess like the mixing as a result of that? Historically, I mean with anything else, it's a lot of conquering and all that stuff. It has lots of roots in French cuisine, a lot of roots in hyper-local, and a lot of execution from Asian cuisine and its homestyle cooking. This has been so dope. Ricky, I appreciate it, man. And you really bring it all together because we were always looking at like, obviously there's more of a personal connection when you do see like, I guess the Asian angle in a food. Kudos to you. Thanks guys. Thank you for stopping in. Thank you for stopping in. Definitely come through Sverna. Sariyevna. Sariyevna. Come through Sariyevna. All right, Andrew. We have landed at a staple spot in the East Village called Veselka, Andrew. It's been open since 1954. They've been serving authentic Ukrainian food, you know, obviously with an expanded American portion. And I wanna say, this is not just for like Ukrainian or Eastern European restaurants. This restaurant is famous, period. It's right at this famous corner of East Village where pretty much you cannot miss it. It's open 24-7 and it's just a really popular restaurant. It is, Andrew. According to many lists, one of the best 24-7 restaurants in the country. That's interesting. 24-hour spots. You're thinking it's diner food. It's like eggs, omelettes, pancakes. I actually have been here once at 3 a.m. I think I've been here with you at 3 a.m. before. All right. You know what? It's not 3 a.m., it's 3 p.m. Let's get into it. You know, we have a tagline. You know, we're Ukrainian soul food. Why don't you have the experience that you went to an Eastern European grandmother's house? How do you compare Ukrainian food and Russian food? I have a lot of similarities. I mean, bias to Ukrainian food because I'm half Ukrainian. We have a large base across the spectrum, you know. This area is very popular with students, as well as we get traditional Ukrainians. We have a Russian community that comes and likes to eat here. We have people that have been coming here for 50 years just because we've been here for 50 years. It's somewhat of an institution, especially in this neighborhood. Okay, so round one of our Ukrainian food journey, David. We're starting off with borscht soup. Okay, this is probably the most famous dish from Ukraine. Yeah, we got a cold borscht here, which is crazy. I've never seen this before. And this is actually authentic borscht, Andrew. I know me and you have eaten a lot of lasung tong, AKA Hong Kong version of borscht, which I believe came from Ukraine to Russia, Russia to Hong Kong. This is a cold borscht. This is what they serve in the summer. And this is interesting, because look how like that color is pretty cool. It's ice borscht, hot borscht. So they say that borscht soup is like a meal in a bowl. I can tell, bro, this is tasty. I think for pretty much probably anybody outside of like Europeans, probably their first borscht might be from a Hong Kong cafe. Whoa, it actually does not taste that different. The Hong Kong version does somewhat taste like it. I think the Hong Kong version from what I know, it has less beets. It has more like tomato cabbage. I like the Hong Kong version. This authentic Ukrainian borscht is better than the Hong Kong version. It's like a cold one's fire. Is this the color of my hat? Close. Andrew. I'm actually gonna wash this down for the sip of Ukrainian beer. All right, cheers. And you got the Levitsky, I got the Obelon. I got red too quick, man. I can't drink too much. Borscht grows. Okay, next on, guys. We gotta hit the pierogies, AKA the Ukrainian dumplings. I'm gonna start off with a fruit dumpling. All right, this is a Valensky filled with blueberries, Andrew, and a very special sweet sour cream. And the sauteed onions is a must. Sauteed onions. Even with this one? Not the blueberry one, but the regular one. See, I didn't know a dumpling would ever have blueberry filling. That is something that's kinda mind-blowing right now. Blueberry Valensky. That is literally blueberries wrapped in a doughy dumpling skin dipped in sweet cream. Fried pierogi. Andrew, Jason was telling us this is the number one seller. When you talk about ribeye and, you know, America is such like a beef-centric country, yeah, I mean, you got some of the best beef right in this dumpling. Andrew, we have a mushroom-sour-crout pierogi. Oh. I love trying different types of dumplings, man. I mean, I'll tell you this, this looks like a Chinese dumpling. And I'm not saying it comes from China, but it could be coming from, what, Mongolians, maybe, the Tartarbs. History's crazy. Almost like a swan-tai dumpling. Oh, with pickled cabbage. Yeah, so. What was that one? Yeah, I don't know. I picked it up off the same place, so I think that was enough. Is that tomato egg? It was good, huh? Oh, this is a bacon-egg and cheese one. They threw one in there for us. Crane, if you've never looked at a map, Ukraine is a pretty big country, like landmass-wise. Huge, actually. Bigger than Germany, bigger than France. This is your arugula and goat cheese pierogi. It's a lot of cheese with the sour cream, but... I accidentally dip mine in the sweet sour cream, and I gotta say that it actually worked out. Am I turning red? No, not yet. But I think after that, there, you're red now. Say it. Ander, we had the borscht, we had the beer, but we are looking at some real Ukrainian food right here. This is a Ukrainian latke. Yeah, I like how thinly shredded the potatoes are. This is a little different than a hash. Don't get a mix up with a hash brown, look at that. Your latkes are huge in Eastern Europe. I love these. I'm really looking forward to this hobotsky, I believe. Let's go at the deluxe. This is a cabbage roll. This is stuffed cabbage with meat and rice. Stuffed cabbage roll. It's got a wild mushroom gravy. Tastes like a rice meatball. Like a wild rice mushroom soup. Yeah, it has a little bit kind of herbaceous. The wild mushroom, wild rice, kind of erby, creamy flavors is really popular amongst American food. Let's try the kubasa. A premium, that was a premium kubasa. Oh, you know, we didn't grow up eating just sausage and kubasa, but I enjoyed it, man. Yo, I'm not gonna lie, this kubasa. Really? Moving on to the Ukrainian latke. This is your classic latke. There's an applesauce here. You have a sour cream there. Eating all around Eastern Europe. Exactly. You know, when you get your stuffed hash browns over at IHOP, they don't give you the applesauce. I'm saying it on the streets of New York right now. I love the shredded potato hash brown, and this is similar to. Let's get it. The potatoes are shredded very, very thin. Usually at the breakfast spots, your diners, you're gonna see them a lot bigger, and then across the edges, what that allows it to do is it allows all those little potatoes to get crispy. But man, look at that. Guys, just for the record, John is 10% Mongolian. John is a progis. He's a progis of mine. All right, you guys, we are at our third and probably the most authentic spot, and we are at Anyway Cafe in the East Village. We're eating Russian French food. I mean, let's look at this. So relating it to a dumpling or a one ton, the dough skin looks just as thick as dumpling skin. You know why you might like it is because it's folded more, but the skin is thinner. Salmon pelmeni. You know, that is fascinating. With the sauce on it, it almost tastes more like a salmon wellington, almost like an ikura flavor. Yeah, dude, that's crazy how it kinda tasted Japanese because our reference for this type of fish egg is Japanese ikura. What do you think about it being a salmon dumpling? I think that this was fascinating. I noticed there's a ton of salmon on this menu, whether it's smoked salmon, we have fresh salmon in the pelmeni. Oh, okay, she brought, No conversation gets too dry. Oh, okay. She said our conversation was too dry, David, we gotta drink some more. I think we should get a splash of Averindil vodka. Okay. Bro, it's lit. This is horseradish, it's very popular in Russia. Okay, so this horseradish vodka is going to be giving us some wasabi vibes at Wine and Maze. You doing a lot. I don't know. This is Zazdorovia, which is literally for your health. Zazdorovia for your health. Pour me up the horseradish one, bro. We're here, and I am so glad we came here because Andrew, this is turning into a really authentic cultural experience. Hold on, I gotta see John take it. Yo, John, you need to see. That's the dope vodka, vodka, as they would say, all right? You are in the sweltering heat. This guy is sweating bullets too. We have the Russian crepes with the caviar. This is the exact same recipe as the French do it. Crepes, the salmon eggs start bursting in your mouth and you get a little bit of sour cream. And David, you got a whole stem of dill in there. Ooh, ooh. We were told that our conversation was too dry and that we have to wet it up with some more vodka. We gotta move on. All this on the menu, Russian peasant beef stew. It's braised in red wine, Russian beef stew. That red wine flavor is really coming through. That beef is so tender, it's melting in my mouth, but it has all the good elements. I mean, that has very, very deep beefy and red wine. Here we have the chicken and herb sauce crepes. Check that out. Wow, that's like a chicken pot pie in a crepe. I've never seen this before. Chicken and herb crepe. Wow, strong wine flavor, creamy. It's got the little bits of mushroom in there. Everything is coming together really nice. That is really good, too. I don't know. Oh. Here, it's your signature blackberry drink and the base is beef horseradish. So the people start just drinking it. That's the color. It doesn't have any dye. Is this gonna taste a little bit like borscht? Absolutely. This is essentially a borscht vodka. Let's do it. David, at the start of this video, kind of one of our goals was to explore the possible ancient Asian influence in Russian and Ukrainian food. What would you say we found? One thing I learned is that it's really regional. For example, if you look at regions of China that have been influenced by Russian cuisine, number one would be Harbin. Harbin and Dongbei, which is right next to Russia. The area is right next to Russia, yeah. But number two would be Hong Kong. Hong Kong cafe culture has been influenced. And that was sort of a pan-European influence on the British colony of Hong Kong. So I realize now that just like you could point to different dishes that Chinese eat, there's such a wide range because the country's so big that we said we're eating Franco-Russo food right now. Which is French Russian. When you're talking about big countries with long histories, it is really complicated and it is multi-layered. And actually it has often to do with provinces and even local geography. All right, Andrew, we are finishing it off. This is a... Pretty sure that's a Bloody Mary. What is that? You tell me, man. That is a... Guys, we rarely drink on the channel, but we just had to do it because you know, we're at a Russian restaurant. That is a smoky, Worcester vodka martini. Bloody Mary. While the rest of this food does not look Asian at all or Chinese, the pelmenis do. Andrew, this might be the most liquor that we've consumed on the channel before, but it makes sense and I'm happy to say that it was at the Russian spot. Anyway, cafe in East Village. From what we researched and found out ourselves, there are a ton of diverse influences depending on where a country is located. For example, Ukraine and Western Russia have a lot more influence from Western Europe like France and Poland. Middle and Eastern Russia have a lot more influence from the Middle East and East Asia. The Asian influence coming from the ancient Mongolian Empire which conquered a lot of territory way back in the day, including China. It makes sense that you would be influenced by your neighbors. I mean, there are some dishes in China that are Russian, Turkish, Mongolian and Korean influenced, vice versa. It's kind of what happens when your country is large, old and has traded with other cultures for centuries. Hey guys, if you guys found that video interesting, please hit that like button. Please click subscribe and definitely turn on your notifications. We're gonna be traveling to all different types of restaurants while in New York City because guess what? You can see the world through New York. So, cheers. Let us know in the comments down below if you've ever tried Russian or Eastern European cuisine. Guys, until next time, we out. Peace. Out of here, out of here, get out of here, y'all. We have a video. Are you here for the video? Not only do you want a tap dancing person here.