 Mmm We serve traditionally Ukrainian food like written in the in a cooking box Yo, I'm gonna go ahead and give this a five out of five man Ukrainian sushi only in New York City Everyone has probably heard of Ukraine by now and while we don't have any solutions for the current conflict What we can do is donate the proceeds of this video and help show you the culture through its food And we always believed eating someone's food is one of the first steps to understanding them We'll be going to six of the top Ukrainian restaurants in New York City Ranging from the most traditional to very modern and since America is home to over 1 million people of Ukrainian descent Little Ukraine in the East Village was the right place to start their food is generally hardy with lots of meat vegetables fruits Sour cream and herbs such as dill and garlic Perhaps you might have eaten a few of their dishes growing up in America, too First spot is a staple of the community one that hasn't changed since 1963 All right, you guys kicking off this video We are in little Ukraine in the East Village Andrew and we are about to try something that is very nostalgic to the Ukrainian American experience circa like 1965 60 years ago We are gonna be trying traditional home style Ukrainian food here at the East Village Ukrainian restaurant here at the Ukrainian national home aka cultural center. All right you guys you are looking at a Ukrainian feast here at Ukrainian East Village restaurant We are looking at halushki right here. I've never had anything like this before I only saw it in my research and this is gonna be kind of like a knocky type thing except it's way bigger And it's got sauerkraut and bacon that actually looks really good And we've got the pelmenis here obviously the berenikes are very Ukrainian It's like more of their own thing kielbasa right here Some people would say perhaps it came from like Poland hola dead right here This is like pork gelatin really excited about trying this guys They do not have this at a lot of other Ukrainian restaurants. This is very very traditional the mushroom barley soup This is also very very traditional because of the climate of Ukraine has a lot of grains a lot of mushrooms Pickled red herring. This is also called a doruny Andrew this potato pancake right here Hungarian goulash Andrew also some Hungarian influence in the region and of course you've got the beef stroganoff I gotta start off with the halushki too. I've never had anything like this before Almost the most thing I could compare it to was like a xinjiang rolled noodle Basically they're gonna be like rolled dough. It's gonna feel a lot like knocky. It's got some onions Maybe got some stir-fried sauerkraut and some of this bacon. Let's look at this halushki A lot softer than other knockies that I've had Great flavor though Andrew incoming we've got salad Olivier favorite in Ukraine You know what's funny is that a lot of the potato salads in America actually do come from this part of the world Salad Olivier It's really tasty potato salad Andrew this might be better than the American version. Mmm Andrew you are looking at the haladet, which is a pork gelatin and interestingly enough Andrew You know where else they eat this is donbe haladet It ain't bad I actually kind of like it. It's really not what you think it is. You think pork gelatin You think it's really something weird, but it's actually just those juices that have become gelatinized From being cold. How many These actually have veal inside. So this is actually very very different than um anything that like a chinese style would eat This tastes like a ling ling from Costco all right, Andrew we are looking at a Daruni which are these potato pancakes with this hungarian goulash because like we said that religion has a lot of influence Poland, hungaria, russia, you can see some shared dishes This one guys, this is probably one of the most famous dishes from this area that has really made it into the american Uh cuisine, which is beef stroganoff. This is a well-loved dish all across this region Named after the stroganoff family. Daruni stroganoff. Yo, Andrew This is the best potato pancake I have ever had in my life I actually really really enjoy the food here at ukrainian village restaurant Our mom cooked a lot of hamburger helper and one of the main flavors of hamburger helper out of the box Was beef stroganoff. So I had this dish growing up but having it at the restaurant It tastes completely different and it's just next level. It's way better All right, you guys i'm proud to say this is much better than my mom's beef stroganoff Andrew you are cutting the kielbasa here at ukrainian east village restaurant Man, like we said, and they kept everything the same since like 1965. This sauerkraut looks different It's a little bit more yellow has more carrots. It looks actually a lot more flavorful than usual Hmm, you know what Andrew it needs this Oh There we go All right here. I got the mushroom barley soup that is super of the mountain and healthy All right, Andrew last but not least we have the pickled red herring Now this is sort of a shared dish in this whole region as well Ukraine is landlocked not as much seafood as some of their neighbors might have right I've never eaten anything like that before in my life All right, you guys my favorite was uh ashki the uh the halushku. That's a really interesting dish I don't think you usually think of sauerkraut cabbage as uh being grilled But man, it really works well there and plus the nice thinly cut bacon is really delicious Mine's got to be the crispy potato pancake daruni with the beef goulash Lots of flavor lots of tomato a little bit of pepper in there My first exposure to like kielbasa potato salad darunis Struggling off. It's actually all through Middle america Sort of like midwestern chains from america exactly guys this style of food has actually made its way and influence the american cuisine Particularly your grocery stores and like kind of like your deli foods Would you say andrew that there's more influence in sort of like uh middle america comfort foods from eastern european people give credit for 100 percent So ukraine is the eighth most populated country in europe. It's bordered by seven different countries and two seas The food is most heavily influenced by cultures such as tatar russian polish hungarian and romanian moldovan They also have really fertile soil and are one of the largest exporters of grain Around the world. So you know, they're not afraid of carbs Our next stop is a small spot called strecha, which only has a handful of dishes But what they do they do very very well All right, our next ukrainian spot is in the ukrainian village. It's called strecha It's been around for a while We started by people from the ukrainian catholic church from across the street a while ago, but man, it's super homemade It's gonna feel like you're eating in like a church meeting room after service. Uh, let's go check it out Okay, my name is demetro kovalenko. I'm running strecha strecha means meeting or gathering and We serve traditionally ukrainian food here really authentic like five items on the menu recipes Which were like written in a in a book cooking books in ukrainian cooking books And you guys are welcome to to visit strecha All right, you guys We are at strecha right now and we are going to be trying their version of the halyubzdi, which is the cabbage roll For me my personal verenekies have always been the potato ones I think that's something so different to me. Obviously as an asian person who's eating a ton of dumplings We would never put potato in one, but maybe we should this is a great idea As you can see this halyubzdi was way more with the tomato sauce on top And it was almost way more dense and packed together tightly and actually I got to say This is the best cabbage roll I ever had. All right, you guys we are looking at the ukrainian borsch right here As you can see there's a lot of beets in there Some cabbages that have obviously been colored by the beets over time. Oh, this is good So this particular version does not have any meat in it. It is strictly vegetarian It's easily the most authentic borsch that I've ever had and actually kind of taste To the version that you get at hong kong cafes in the law sum tong very sweet and the flavor is very moderate Um, not very extreme Mmm Really tastes like the beets that I would eat growing up with the salad clean soup Give you with the I love these fried onions that they give you with the verena key Mmm simple good. Just like grandma made it Delicious, it's kind of like a rice sausage wrapped in a cabbage roll the way I always interpreted it was that You know, they did what the best they could do with the ingredients that they had Ukrainians are considered part of the slobbing ethnic and cultural group more specifically eastern slobbs This group also includes most russians and belarusians Even doing research for this video It opened my eyes to so much that I didn't know about my ukrainian or russian neighbors growing up This is food that is more similar to the ones that you would find in odessa or a larger city This is more elevated like a restaurant in eastern europe would be all right This is one of the most famous dishes from this region. This is chicken kiv Obviously it's named after the capital of ukraine and it's actually very laborious to make So that's why I feel like a lot of people don't serve it, but it's actually a chicken roll with butter inside So let's cut it open. I was told to be careful because the butter is hot Whoa The butter is spilling out That is a fried chicken butter roll Let's take a look at that. Wow The famous chicken kiv Wow, that actually has so much chicken flavor and the melted butter that's flowing out Especially with the little dill that's also Um part of the butter man. That was just so good. I've never actually had a dish like this before It's like a very very buttery dilly chicken Now actually a lot of dishes from this region are also influenced by french techniques So this is very similar to like a chicken cordon bleu except instead of cheese you have butter That's a that's a must-try dish man the beet salad obviously it looks a lot different than the mom and pop spots It's got olives beets are such a huge part of borsch as well So it's just really really native to a lot of different dishes in that region Honestly guys, this is the best beet salad I ever had in my entire life man And you know, some people they don't like these like little peas that they have on top But I always like these I think it just goes to show you that there's some dishes Where a lot of people are like, oh, I don't like beets because you're used to having low quality beets But when you have a beet salad that is high quality, it's actually a banger All right, you guys here we have the cold herring the onions and the potatoes It's like sort of looks like some stuff that you might have had before but honestly I've never had this presentation before honestly the cold dill onions are something that's a little new to me Obviously guys a lot of like eastern european influence and I definitely feel it All right, you guys we are looking at a traditional eastern european or odessa chicken soup You know, obviously this is a dish that everybody's had at some point and a lot of cultures have their own version But i'm always excited to try an elevated version that is very authentic Another thing that I think is really interesting is I get to see how much of american food actually is influenced by eastern european cuisine A lot more than I thought particularly food that seems like it's from the midwest America is such a mishmash of different immigration waves from many different parts of the world But I think a lot of the stews potentially came from eastern european immigration Early we had some very traditional potato granites, but here we have spinach ones These are very special to this restaurant and odessa food in general is a lot more unique here These are sauteed both sides very thin skin throwing a little bit of sour cream on there spinach, verenike Oh man So this actually tastes kind of like a pot sticker except with the spinach and artichoke filling So that's kind of like the fusion right there Mmm skin soft Get a little bit of oil from the pan fry These verenikes are not pleated They just kind of seal on the side on the edges right here as you can see they're really crispy Then you throw on a little sour cream you rip it open and there's the cheese and spinach mixture inside The exterior really feels like a pot sticker, but the inside feels more like a kind of greek mixture ravioli Here we are with the very special mushroom pasta Okay, you have some wild mushrooms that are sauteed on top You have a lot of cheese that has been sprinkled as you can tell from the food There is a lot of usage of kind of like wild mushrooms And I think that just goes to show you like even when you think about wild mushroom soup from progress or from cambels That that might have been influenced by you know this region of food So particularly at this restaurant that is more odessa based, you know This food is going to have a lot of like western europe Influence is just like french or italian techniques, but using more of the You know eastern european ingredients. This is my first time having Wild mushroom creamy spaghetti Strong mushroom flavor coming in Not too creamy Really good It's really cool to see pasta Um a dish that you know originally comes from italy, but you know almost everybody in the world has their own Pasta dishes and this is no different. You know, you have wild mushroom dishes You have a Somali pasta. You have japanese pasta You know, you even have hong kong cafe style pastas Listen everybody's doing their own pasta and everybody's putting their own ingredients on it You also have infused vodka right here And this is something that you know a lot of people from this region are doing especially, you know They drink so much vodka. They started infusing a lot of fruit into it. It's good still very strong though I don't know. Maybe it's because i'm not a very big drinker But I definitely like the fruit infused vodka better than just the straight up vodka. All right, you guys, this is called birds milk It's my very first time having it. It's got dark chocolate coffee cacao Guys i'm telling you my parents would love this because it's not too sweet. It's not overly chocolatey Almost gives you some of that mylo type vibe where it's almost like multi But uh, I never had anything like this before. This is a muscat Oh wow Yeah, that's a souffle. That's why it kind of feels puffy like a marshmallow This is the best dessert that you've never heard of birds milk Mmm. I like that a lot Mishka was a cool experience because I didn't know what modern twists on ukrainian classics would be like And the owner was very proud of her odessa roots I mean, how could she not be when steven spielberg johnny dep and leonardo de caprio all have roots from odessa Not to mention mila kunis and mila jovovic were born in ukraine as well We are probably at the most well-known ukrainian restaurant in new york city in manhattan. It's called viselka a staple in new york city since 1954 they're very much embedded in the city almost everybody has eaten at viselka at some point and they are serving a mixture of authentic ukrainian soul food here you have the stuffed cabbage This is actually a lot of wild grain rice some minced meat wrapped in a cabbage steamed and then put mushroom gravy on top This used to be vegetable only because it was a peasant food in ukraine But obviously the modern version um has a lot more meat hulub ski. This is a ukrainian cabbage roll Progresso does a wild chicken and rice like a cream of chicken It tastes like that but better what you're gonna find out from ukrainian food Is that it does take a lot of mixtures from all the bordering countries because over time Of course culture was shared and dishes were shared So some people I've heard say that this originates from lithuania But of course the guys like I said culture is shared and everybody does their own take on it The ukrainian server was telling us that every ukrainian mother would even make it differently So it's not just very in country to country or province to province. It's family to family Next up we got the ukrainian borscht soup. This is the original borscht beet soup So this is a little bit of sour cream. They give us some red. This looks like uh Fruits and in crane butter. Well, and we're actually interestingly enough hong kong people got it from the british who got it from ukraine this version actually has this version actually has pork in it, bro I'm about to eat this like a taco ukrainian borscht Served hot which is a very traditional ukrainian style way But this is the paprikash It is a chicken dish that originally comes from hong gary, but of course like we said eastern europe They all share cultures and share flavors This is kind of like a struggling off or I would say almost like their version of a chicken tiki masala It almost looks like it chicken paprikash Yum Yo, we're gonna go ahead and give this a five out of five man. These chicken chunks are juicy It's actually not very spicy, but it's got a like nice mild creaminess to it. This is kasha This is their traditional kind of grain rice. Whoa Kind of like very barley barley to the max and we've arrived at the vereniki section, which is the ukraine dumplings Same exact word in poland. They call them pierogies vereniki is actually they trace it to like the url mountains That they incorporate a lot more sour cream dumplings a lot more fruit blueberry Dumplings because they use a lot more fruit in their cooking One of the things I heard andrew was that ukraine actually has a much more fertile soil Than some of the other surrounding countries in the region Which as you guys know, especially from an ancient perspective, you could only cook what you got around you I got a sauerkraut and wild mushroom one andrew looks like you've got one with a lot of like chives and sour cream in it You have never seen dumplings with these fillings before vereniki And you know, we had to get them boiled because that's the traditional way they do offer them fried though You know, who would have thought that it'd be so normal to just be eating applesauce with your dumplings I remember growing up if we wanted to get Eastern european or ukrainean food you had to go to the market We got exposed to a lot of like russian and ukrainean chocolates growing up too All right andrew, what was your favorite dish here at veselka? This spot is known to be like sort of like mainstream ukraine and american fare You know, I mean not as ultra traditional or some other spots, which I am excited to go to I'm actually going to go with the cabbage rolls I think the cabbage rolls are cool because you get your carbs you get your meat you get some veggies in I got to go with the ukrainean paprikash Paprikash the way that they did it here was so delicious. It was easy to eat I could eat this whole little Boat right here. All right. I got my sour cream grilled onions eating it with my chicken paprikash She took the vereniki sour cream. Let's put it in the paprikash So good, man Three two one guys. This is applesauce on a dumpling. Aren't you guys we're here with alan of specta We basically are like more like on the modern side and the european side We basically combine both together have like beef stroganoff and what I do is I add like a puff pastry on top of it The ukrainean sushi sushi everyone knows the sushi is right So then we basically took the whole european side russian side ukrainean side. We like combine it together What do people say like from the from europe region of the world when they're like seeing Do these new inventive things? They love it. They love it. At first I thought they wouldn't you're not forgetting where your roots are and we respect that you're in america So yeah, they respected aren't you guys we are in specta Which is a modern ukrainian american restaurant in the west village You guys are looking at ukrainian sushi right here as evidenced by the flag You've got some caviar, which is very common in that region. You've got some different sort of uh, butter I think some sort of dill Different things that are native to ukraine. I mean like we said, it's a pretty fertile environment. You can grow a lot of stuff ukrainian sushi Only in new york city You have uh the japanese, you know ikura, which is like caviar, which they eat a lot in ukraine in that region You've got the smoked fish. You've got the cucumbers. This does taste a little bit like a blintz, which in ukraine I believe they call melenski. Listen guys, this does not fully taste like sushi But if you made me say it tasted like any sushi roll it tasted like a filly roll because of the cream cheese in the locks Tastes like a cross between the ukrainian melenski and sushi Oh All right, you guys we are looking at two modern ukrainian american dishes right here This is chicken tabaka and this is beef stroganoff. Obviously we have eaten, uh, a hungarian chicken dish Uh papriška chicken in this video. We've also had beef stroganoff, but these are the more modernized versions Obviously this is influenced by a beef wellington from, uh, I would say the uk You can see you've got the egg noodles in there Um less sour cream. This is really cool. What the heck? I've never seen anything like this before in my life All right, you guys chicken tabaka is originally from the country of georgia Georgian in origin, but ukrainian version This is a lemon butter sauce and this is flattened fried chicken with some knocky chicken tabaka I've eaten my favorite chair of chicken thighs in my life This is one of the very best ones top 5 percentile and i've eaten it at least a hundred times Chicken tabaka All right, here we have the beef stroganoff and now you know the stroganoff pasta is going to be more in a noodle form Versus kind of like the pasta form looks a little bit less creamy and more spicy than the other beef stroganoff So we had let's try it This actually tastes like a cross between the um beef stroganoff and a chicken paprikash So it has a little bit more spices a little less cream, but still beefy Mmm This definitely does not taste like that beef stroganoff I used to get out of hamburger helper shout out to mom though But I can probably speak for most american kids when I say that my only exposure to dishes like beef stroganoff Were really the out of the box version. This really sets the bar now. I can't eat hamburger helper anymore This is it. You know the fact that maybe this dish right here chicken tabaka Comes from georgia. It's not crazy because you know, especially when countries have shared culture or they share borders for many many years It's very likely that they're going to share dishes and cultural influences as well. Let me try it That is some of the most tender grilled chicken Maybe i've ever had the chicken tabaka with the naki. That's the winner right here If you come to the west village you come here Make sure you get this dish So that wraps it up for our video on ukrainian food and yes in america oftentimes Immigrants from neighboring countries will clump their dishes and ingredients together at their grocery stores and even restaurants But sometimes it's also cool to kind of sparse it out and dive into the specifics of each one At the end of the day geopolitics war government stuff. It's all very complicated and overall never good for the common person So as we sit here safely in america, we can do what we can Below are some links to different legitimate organizations You can donate to that will help ukraine and the people that are affected by the war Leave a comment down below if you've ever had this food. Let us know what you think and until next time we're out. Peace