Now that the readers' have been polled, their choices are revealed the Kyiv Post delves into questions of best bar, best restaurant, best airline and plenty more
ices) is this year’s choice for the top place to eat at off hours. Not only is the sushi good, but the establishment buzzes with social energy all night, unlike here.
Lonely Planet doesn’t get it, but Kyivans do. They rate Domashnya Kukhnya as the city’s best place to score a fast meal.
The best place to eat outdoors in Kyiv is no doubt around the fountain at Zoloti Vorota, where the food is provided by Pantagruel, right up the way. Al fresco eating at its best.
The best place to eat on a first date is Belgian restaurant Le Cosmopolite, where the staff will make you feel, well, in the mood.
The best ice cream in this capital of a country that knows how to do ice cream right is at Vechirny Kyiv, our readers say.
The newest of the Concord Group restaurants, the slick Marokana is Kyiv’s most fashionable new boite, the place where you’ll want to see and be seen this winter.
Good ambient music and fine service weren’t the only things that Concord restaurant had going for it. The food was also outstanding. While we like the veal tartar with quail eggs, Post readers were less specific in their praise.
Undoubtedly, this category has seen the most change over the last two years. Kyiv has witnessed the arrival of large Western chains such as TGI Friday’s, plus the advent of super-popular customer-reward cards from various restaurant groups, such as Kozyrna Karta and Myrova Karta. There’s fast-food, Turkish style, at Gurmet, theme restaurants for the television- or the Disney-minded and even the great boon of reliable delivery service.
While we left out such categories as best burger and best dessert this time around, these were covered in weekly polls recently, with the obvious favorites Arizona and Repriza, respectively, taking top honors.
In the end, there were so many different categories to which we could have asked Post readers to respond that what follows doesn’t necessarily reflect all the incredible transformation that’s taken place in Kyiv over the last two years. This is a city in the midst of a revolution, so to speak: we could hardly comprehend it all. What follows, however, is a good preliminary guide to what’s going on around town in a rapidly evolving sector.
Best fast-food restaurant:
Domashnya Kukhnya
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| Photo by Yevhen Kolesnyk |
It’s hard to believe a publication as generally reliable as the Lonely Planet Guide for Eastern Europe could make such a massive mistake when it comes to such a mainstay of Ukrainian fast food. You’d think from reading Lonely Planet that “Dom Ashnya” – as the guide calls it – is just another typical stop for cheap Ukrainian grub. Kyiv Post readers know better.
Post poll respondents overwhelmingly voted in favor of Domashnya Kukhnya (“Home Cooking”) as this year’s best fast-food place, beating out the winner from our last “Best Of,” which was McDonald’s. (Which was this year’s first runner-up, as it happened.) Close behind the American trash-food titan were Rostyk’s chicken the Potato House franchises and Mak Smak.
DK makes all the sense in the world as a winner. It is fast, the food is good, the portions are more than adequate and it’s cheap like borscht, as one Post staffer is known to remark.
Remarkably, Domashnya Kukhnya is a mainstay even among some of Kyiv’s best-dressed looking for a fast dinner before heading down Bohdana Khmelnytskoho to the National Opera Theater. But it’s a favorite of everyone else, too.
The popularity of Domashnya Kukhnya has grown so much that a second location opened last year at Kontraktova Ploshcha. That location is proving just as popular as the first, whether for the varenyki, the barbecued chicken, the solyanka or the desserts.
One minor criticism, if that’s what it is, is that both locations are absolutely thronged at peak meal times. Maybe they’ll expand. DK might not have served billions yet, but if Post readers get their way, they’ll get there.
Best all-night restaurant:
Yakitoria
We’re journalists, and we work late nights, so this is a category that’s close to our hearts. Many is the early morning when we stagger out of the office a couple hours before dawn, or eyes glazed and our bodies craving sustenance.
The thing is, though, that we couldn’t base our award solely on our own proclivities. We’re not the only people out late in Kyiv. There are also the natives, in particular members of the affluent new Ukrainian middle-class, and they’ve got a late-night agenda, too, spilling as they are out of clubs at weird hours, looking for a place to eat before heading home to their luxury apartments in those new buildings along Lesi Ukrainky. Yakitoria, they’ve voted, is the place where they like to go.
This all-night Japanese restaurant, filled with well-dressed men and women who drive into the parking lot in late-model Beemers and Benzes, was named for its food, of course. Sushu is proving popular in Kyiv these days, as are all things minimal and Japanese.
Other votes went to The Hairy Lemon, Corona Club and Deja Vu.
Best pizza: Vesuvio
Among the many things that Ukrainians do right, pizza typically isn’t considered one of them. That’s no surprise – Italians aren’t really thick on the ground in Kyiv – so it presents the ‘za-loving diner with certain challenges. Ordering a pizza in too many Kyivan restaurants can turn into a primer on one of the uses of the commonly Russian and Ukrainian word “bez,” or without. “A pizza, please, bez turnips, bez brussels sprouts, bez pickles and bez mayonnaise. No, no, no: keep the cheese, the tomatoes and the mushrooms.”
Then there’s the dough, which tends toward the soggy, city-wide. Well, it’s okay. As it has in so many things, Kyiv will catch up, and eventually excel.
We’re exaggerating, needless to say. There are several places in Kyiv that do fine pizza. Despite one voter enthusiastically exclaiming ”No question: LOLA!” it was Vesuvio, located in the heart of the embassy district, which took the garland this year for Best Of pizza honors.
Enthusiasm for Vesuvio is likely on account of the pizza, naturally. Their vegetarian pie, which Post staffers have sometimes seen in the newsroom is good, and they seem to acquire excellent salami, to us a rarity in Eastern Europe.
“It’s nice to sit outside under the trees in summer, eating Vesuvio’s,” said one.
Other votes went to Patio Pizza, UNO pizza, Mak Smak, Walter’s, Dos Tres Quattro, La Bella and American.
Best patio: Pantagruel
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| Photo by Andry Porokhnenko |
A crowded field, this one. European city that it is, with the sort of great pedestrian and boulevard culture that conduces toward outdoor dining establishments, Kyiv’s got more good al fresco dining options than it even needs. Here’s a rundown of some of the places named by readers: Hutorok, the barge restaurant, liked by some for being at the river’s edge, looking out over the downtown on a summer night; Kozak Mamai; Passazh; Black Orange in Podil and numerous cafes on the Andriyivsky Uzviz.
Kyiv, which many readers commented was a most beautiful and underrated city, may have been disappointed that there were fewer warm days to enjoy these places for a shashlik and a beer, but a choice has to be made, and this year, top al fresco honors go to Pantagruel, which runs the patio restaurant around the gorgeous fountain at Zoloti Vorota. If there’s a better place to eat outdoors in any city anywhere on the planet, we’re not sure we’ve seen it, and Post readers agree.
Here’s some of what they like about the Pantagruel patio: the fountain; the overhanging trees; and the pre-revolutionary architecture all around the park.
Some simply mentioned Pantagruel’s Italian food as some of the best in the city and, when added to the fountain, made it ”simply irresistable.”
Best pizza: Vesuvio
Among the myriad of things that Ukrainians do right, pizza typically isn’t considered one of them. That’s no surprise – Italians aren’t really thick on the ground in Kyiv – so it presents the ‘za-loving diner with certain challenges. Ordering a pizza in too many Kyivan restaurants can turn into a primer on one of the uses of the commonly Russian and Ukrainian word bez, or without. ”A pizza, please, bez turnips, bez brussels sprouts, bez pickles and bez mayonnaise. No, no, no: keep the cheese, the tomatoes and the mushrooms.”
Then there’s the dough, which tends toward the soggy, city-wide. Well, it’s okay. As it has in so many things, Kyiv will catch up, and eventually excel.
We’re exaggerating, needless to say. There are several places in Kyiv that do fine pizza. Despite one voter enthusiastically exclaiming ”No question: LOLA!” it was Vesuvio, located in the heart of the embassy district, which took the garland this year for Best Of pizza honors.
Enthusiasm for Vesuvio is likely on account of the pizza, naturally. Their vegetarian pie, which Post staffers have sometimes seen in the newsroom is good, and they seem to acquire excellent salami, to us a rarity in Eastern Europe.
”It’s nice to sit outside under the trees in summer, eating Vesuvio’s,” said one.
Other votes went to Patio Pizza, UNO pizza, Mak Smak, Walter’s, Dos Tres Quattro, La Bella and American.
Best first-date restaurant: Le Cosmopolite
Want Post readers need from a first-date restaurant is a certain comfort level. Like us, they’re probably scared out of their wits. They need a place that will help them maintain what’s possibly the fiction that they’re the slickest thing Kyiv has ever seen. The last thing they need is a bad bottle of wine, or a bum dish, or a cup of scorched coffee, or anything else to turn the date sour.
Despite strong competition in this new category (last time asking for best place to take a first date) Le Cosmopolite, that wonderful Belgian restaurant on Volodymyrska, is Post readers go-to first-date choice. The staff received marks for being energetic and charming, the place itself for being beautiful for its ”rich wood interior and sparkling mirrors” and the food, noted by many for being, as one reader penned, ”just excellent.”
The place was ranked just as highly by male readers, who felt more likely to enjoy themselves at Le Cosmopolite given its wide selection of Belgian beers.
Also noted were Pantagruel fountain; Dixieland; Marquise de Chocolat; and this year’s runner-up, Art Club 44, where as one reader put it, ”it’s not too expensive to feel uncomfortable, not too exquisite to feel obliged, and relaxing enough to feel free.”
Best European restaurant: Dixieland
Sure it’s out of the way, unless you work at the zoo. But it’s worth the trip, according to readers.
This soothing, masculine-looking, eclectic French establishment had the right effect on the frost-covered souls in the poll, noting the piano music and the jazz, the accommodating staff (one Post staffer mentioned showing up to find the place closed for a private party and was begged to return to eat at a 15 percent discount), and the food. And for after dinner, one enjoyed the combination of a French brandy when combined with Romeo y Julietas ”those great Cuban smokes,” we quote.
While others mentioned included Fellini, Da Vinci and Le Grand Care, what got the most votes here was luxurious French-influenced cooking that is, apparently, worth the cost. Or maybe it’s worth it just to visit the nearby zoo.
Best Asian restaurant: San Tori
Boasting Kyiv’s only true Thai cuisine, San Tori won approval from Post readers this year likely because the place is so flexible. Beyond the Thai is the traditional and always eye-catching action around the teppanyaki grill, a great sushi bar and ownership that know how and when to reinvent themselves to stay fresh and interesting – just like the food.
Authentic Asian cuisine is prepared at San Tori – a veritable hot spot in Podil – by professional chefs Do Do Kitivat of Thailand and Tokashi Kobayashi of Japan who use the highest quality imported ingredients. The food might cost a bit more than most places, but you get what you pay for: 20 kinds of sushi and sashimi, traditional Japanese and Thai appetizers, and with all that around, good conversation just flows.
After several months of renovations, San Tori recently reopened this past September, their first renovations since they opened in 1997. The new style, defined as Eastern modernity, is notable for lots of black granite, a ceiling of bamboo and original lamps of warm orangey-reds and tans. An interesting part of the renovation work to check out is the new corner lounge with its soft couches, and the new VIP zone done in lilac. Minimal changes were made in the Japanese hall, but now the chairs and lighting are better.
It’s hard to believe that more Thai restaurants haven’t opened in Kyiv, especially considering how Post readers (and staffers) have raved about the spicy red and green coconut curries among other potent potations, not to mention items on the Japanese sushi menu like the Ukraine Roll: black and red caviar, salmon, escallops and vegetables; the classic Californian roll: crab and avocado; or the Igor Roll: escallops with flying fish roe and green onion.
The taste and atmosphere – among the very best in Kyiv – amply evidence San Tori’s deserving title as the readers’ Best Of choice for Asian restaurant.
Best Ukrainian restaurant: U Seni i Gogi
This is Ukraine, so figuring out what the best Ukrainian restaurant is can be a tough business, but typically it comes down to the following group: Pervak, Lypsky Mansion, Kozak Mamai and Tsarske Selo. The fact that readers chose U Seni i Gogi this year may have to do with vote-splitting, or with ballot-box stuffing, but it’s likely more due to the simple fact that they do original Ukrainian dishes better than the others. There’s a folksy Ukrainian feel to the place: we like the wooden fences and hand-woven covers that line the wooden benches.
Aside from the standards mentioned above, also receiving votes were Kozachok, Hutorets and Taras. And while all these places may attract larger crowds and banquet-type feasts, it was the smaller, quainter and lesser-known Ukrainian restaurant U Seni i Gogi that came out as this year’s surprise winner as the Best Of Ukrainian restaurant.
And for those who didn’t know, the name U Seni i Gogi plays on the word ”synagogue,” which gives a clue to its location near Kyiv’s historical Central Synagogue.
Best New Restaurant: Marokana
The newest of the Concord Group restaurants, Marokana is Kyiv’s latest high-style boite, radiating social energy from its position on the corner of Lesi Ukrainky and Kotuzova. The black luxury sedans parked outside and tall women in cocktail dresses tottering about on their spike heels didn’t seem to bother Post readers, who named this Kyiv’s best new restaurant. This place has, one reader noted, ”buzz.”
Not a straightforward restaurant, it’s a combination club, lounge-bar and restaurant where, as the decor is done in a glossy Moroccan-influenced style. The only thing that doesn’t smack of North Africa here is the menu. Besides tea, couscous and the oriental spices that pop up in dishes here and there, the menu’s full of good sushi and sashimi: not exactly Saharan food, but definitely to Post readers’ tastes.
But back to the social energy, which to readers proved as important as the excellent food, they felt there part of another, more glamorous dimension: a world of moody, flattering lighting, cocktails, and well-dressed people reclining on couches. Also making waves in this category were Karavan, Le Cosmopolite, Fondue Bar in Globus and Wagon restaurant on Chervonoarmiyska.
Best overall restaurant: Concord
This category ended up being a who’s who of Kyiv restaurants: kitschy movie-land Mimino, all-hours Fellini, patio-plenty Pantagruel, jazzy Dixieland and a few more besides. The whole situation was well-summed up by one reader, who responded like so:
”I can’t name only one, because it all depends on my mood. But Concord can definitely be named one of the best.”
We agree. This posh little Japanese-French fusion spot (with a little Middle East influence mixed in) high atop the Donbass Business Center is fine with us. By a slim margin, Concord took top honors this year over other standouts like Le Grand Cafe and Sam’s Steak House, which finished second and third, respectively.
So what is it that Kyiv Post readers thought of when they thought of naming Concord as tops in Kyiv? A few ex-pats go there just for the view, and more than a few have raved about the duck a l’orange, but what else? How about the restaurant’s ability to set a mood? The in-house deejay, who plays relaxing electro-lounge music, has done well enough that she’s produced her own lounge compilation CD. And the service has to be considered a huge plus, as it is consistently among the best in Kyiv: the sommelier, which helps patrons navigate the extensive wine list, is a bonus.
But ambient music and good service isn’t enough to win a restaurant top honors. There also has to be food. And Concord’s is good. Some of the dishes we like include veal tartar with quail eggs with fresh ginger in a spicy ugdeen sauce; chicken in a ginger-soy sauce with couscous; and great grill items like lamb or pork ribs.
Concord won last year for best salads (they actually have real feta cheese on their Greek salads, which in itself is an achievement in Kyiv), but this year the establishment has done itself one better: Post readers have given Concord the nod as the best restaurant in Kyiv, bar none.
Where to go to get your kicks and knock back drinks
Okean Elzy, shown here in concert at the Kyiv Sports Palace earlier this year in support of their Supersymmetry album, are Kyiv’s best band. Guitarist Pavlo Khudimov is shown with frontman Slava Vakarchuk.
Call it an uncontroversial choice. We don’t think anyone will argue that football titans Dynamo are Kyiv’s best sports team.
The Golden Gate Pub, that cozy establishment located on a quiet side street, was named Kyiv’s best bar, and should be a good place to melt the frost off your soul as winter progresses.
Three in the morning could find Kyivan readers anywhere, and often finds Post staffers at the Hairy Lemon restaurant on Lesi Ukrainky. But many of our readers would rather be in bed.
Ukrainian pop icon Ruslana and many other local and international stars perform at 44, the popular Eric Aigner establishment that our readers are once again calling this year’s best venue for live music.
No question, the partying and socializing help make Kyiv great. People of all sorts of temperments make their homes here, working hard, and they need to let off steam. This is a good place to do that. Thankfully, the beer is cheap, the venues top-notch and the good just keeps getting better.
Lots has changed on the nightclub front, especially. Gone are Brazilia and Ultra. Renovated have been Utyugi (once Promzona), Freedom (the old Hollywood) and Tusetye (it used to be Budapest). Just plain new are Moda Bar, Fusion, the hopping Tchaikovsky and a number of others. While many ex-pats (and Ukrainians, too) would prefer to see more in the way of cultural events covered in our periodic polls, we decided not to include such topics in this year’s edition. We simply couldn’t do it all, and the realm of high culture doesn’t change so fast that it necessitates constant reappraisal.
Whatever the case, Kyiv’s arts, culture and nightlife scenes are among the best in Eastern Europe. Let the following be a preliminary guide to some of it all.
Best Russian/Ukrainian pick up line: a smile
This is truly one of the hardest categories to try to pick a winner in, given that there are so many different possible ways and means to pick up in bustling, vibrant Kyiv. What works for one person on any given occasion may generate a smack across the face once the dynamics change. We wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt.
The reader suggestions that we found cute ranged from the simple (“Vam ne kholodno?” or “Are you cold?”); to the sweetly suggestive (“U menya ochen sladaya sertsya,” or “I have a very weak heart”); to the straightforward (“Zakomposiruyte pozhalusta talonchyk!” or “Punch my ticket, please!”). But tops was simply this response, which we’ll agree is likely to depend upon the occasion: “What always works for me is just a smile,” one female reader told us.
If only it were that easy.
Best bar: Golden Gate Pub
“That depends on your intentions,” quipped one reader in the Best Of bar category.
Whether native Kyivan or ex-pat, the denizens of Kyiv like bars. They always have and, unless something changes, always will.
Obviously, the city is thronged with cafes and restaurants, in which to sit and drink beer. The experience of a bar needs only boil (or bubble) down to this.
Perhaps it’s the way the question was phrased, as we asked for best beer-drinking place, but also best after-work and pick-up bars as well. Focusing on a lean mix of the three, then, few were chosen, and only one was called Kyiv’s Best Of. One of the city’s Irish bars, O’Brien’s, received enough votes to capture 3rd place, just ahead of Belle Vue. In second, due – we can only imagine – to vote-splitting, was Eric’s Bierstube. (If combined with Art Club 44, Eric’s Family would have taken the cake.) But in first was the city’s other Irish bar and this year’s Best Of bar, Golden Gate.
Set in a cozy underground location on its quiet side street, with Zoloti Vorota looming out front, GG took top honors for good service, a friendly atmosphere thanks to General Manager Robin Attryde and, above all, its beers: Western brews such as Grolsch, Warsteiner, John Smith, and Guinness (which won GG best in that category earlier this year), and local brews Taller and Chernihivske Biyle.
Having been around for quite some time already, GG’s has competed with Eric’s and O’Brien’s, this year taking top spot ahead of previous champion 44. Post respondents had different reasons for digging the homey atmosphere there, and one was particularly touched that he was able to be part of what he called “the classiest hockey draft ever,” thanks to a string quartet playing in the background. Also, GG received mention for hosting the periodic “pub nights” the Canadian Embassy throws there.
Others receiving votes were The Hairy Lemon, Arizona BBQ and Kozak Mamai.
Best billiards: Kiev
Admittedly, members of the Kyiv Post’s ex-pat staff had a slim idea about Russian billiards or snooker, having little time for anything beyond the newsroom but beer and breakfast. As far as we’re concerned, billiards or socializing in most forms remains a struggle. Still, we’re glad there exist places where we can try our hands at difficult games and lend ourselves to more familiar pursuits as well. Again, like beer-drinking.
The Kiev billiards club, which sits upstairs from the cinema of the same name, took top honors as Kyiv’s Best Of pool hall. And why not? In some ways it’s like right out of a movie. Sharks sum up their competition through gimlet eyes, circulating tensely around the tables; smoke circulates moodily in light thrown by low-slung lamps; there prevails, in general, that electric feeling that comes when there’s money on the line.
Russian billiards may be new to ex-pats, but it’s the standard for Ukrainians, and so the club’s filled with Russian tables, with their smaller, less forgiving pockets. But Kiev also offers classic eight-ball tables for playing standard billiards, and a few snooker tables, even.
Whether or not Post readers noted the cavernous and hushed interior, the Kiev billiards club made many feel it for a great place to meet people: ”It’s close to Eric’s, and right near a metro stop,” said one respondent. One reader who often arrives too early for his Saturday afternoon matinee at the theater downstairs likes to go there to kill some time. Not a bad reason to show up, indeed.
Others receiving votes included The Old Fart, Opera Cafe, Arizona’s, Rumta and, as first runner-up, O’Brien’s.
Best casino: Gabriela
There were votes for the grand-looking Imperial. There were votes for the Klitschko-owned Rio. A couple votes even rolled in for the budget-stakes Opera Cafe. But in the end it came down to two: Budapest and Gabriela. After the chips fell, Gabriela came out as the city’s top casino in this year’s Best Of poll.
Among the city’s longest-serving casinos – it’s been in the business for 10 years – Gabriela lets gamblers enjoy more stately surroundings than so most of the city’s newer and glitzier casinos. Gabriela has resisted the temptation to attract customers with neon and slick gimmickry. Instead, the lures are straight-up games and a classic, no-nonsense gaming environment.
Check out the turn-of-the-century drapery, the dim overhead lighting and the regal colors used throughout the place, which is located on the second floor of the Dnipro Hotel at the beginning of Khreshchatyk. It all conduces toward a more rarefied atmosphere.
What you get at Gabriela are classic games like blackjack, American roulette and Caribbean stud poker, a range of complimentary drinks, which include Heineken and Corona rather than just the obvious Ukrainian standards. And at Gabriela, players are there to actually have fun: there’s no pouting, none of that bad vibe that chronic gamblers can bring to a casino, none of that haggard, frantic energy that can make a casino experience unpleasant.
A few Post readers did mention they’ve never been in a casino, but if they’re looking for one, the few that did mention any say Gabriela’s the place to go.
Best reason to stay in
Ukraine: excitement;
Best reason to leave
Ukraine: corruption
Exciting country, Ukraine, isn’t it? Even if you don’t follow the news, the mere street and social life in Kyiv can make your head spin. New businesses opening on every corner, then closing, and yielding to others; a weirdly thrilling interplay between authoritarianism and license, as illustrated by the fact that you can walk, swigging a beer openly in a way you could never do in the U.S., past the headquarters of the secret police; statuesque women everywhere; and top-of-the-line BMWs raging through intersections, regardless of the lights.
Whatever Ukraine is, though, home it is not.
So what are foreigners staying for?
Our poll respondents mentioned a number of reasons: nostalgia; a famously hospitable populace; and, more practically, work. Others offered double-edged answers that betrayed a certain ambivalence. One reader said he wanted to stay to see Ukraine become a real European country, but wanted to leave because he didn’t know when that would happen. Another explained that he was staying because the country was so unpredictable and feverish, but said that those were the same reasons why he thought he might leave.
Other answers on the upside included beautiful women, cheap vodka and “a perfect combination of local exotica, European cultivation and Slavic chic.” Answers to the contrary included saving your liver, no job, and the high risks associated with doing business here.
Best live music venue:
Art Club 44
Please remove all caps and honor another victory for Art Club 44, which has won this year’s ribbon for Best Of live music venue. Post readers would also have us honor, in particular, owner Eric Aigner.
Garnering votes as likely the city’s (or even Ukraine’s) biggest fan of live music, and especially live jazz, Aigner certainly has few peers with which to be compared. He has passion and energy like few others.
Aigner’s flagship establishment is central geographically, of course: it’s about as downtown as downtown gets. In addition, it’s culturally central. If you’re thinking about what’s happening in the city any given week in terms of good live music, it’s the first place to consider. The German entrepreneur has brought in De Phazz, Hiram Bullock and Dean Brown from abroad, and also cultivated local acts like VV, Mandry and Haydamaky. Even clubs such as Buddy Guy, Deja Vu and Swing couldn’t count more than a vote each against this Kyiv ex-pat standard, which took all but five (all but five) of the votes.
But if live music is the name of the game at 44 for ex-pats and Ukrainians alike, there’s another bonus: it’s also a great place to go and hang out if you care nothing about music. Many like the place as a sort of cozy, candlelit joint that’s perfect for escaping winter or anywhere out of doors. 44 is always a big, all-welcoming party.
It must also be noted that 44 has one of the best whiskey lists in a beer, wine and vodka city.
No, the sound isn’t ideal at 44, about which some picky scenesters did complain. Brick doesn’t resonate as well as wood. But who cares? This underground nook where the vibe is right is home to the hippest crowds in Kyiv and the hearts of Kyiv Post readers.
Best place to be at 3 a.m. on a Saturday morning: In bed
Forget partying. Sure, Kyiv is increasingly becoming a 24-hour city: You’ve got your 24-hour restaurants, gastronomes, supermarkets, clubs and everything else. But that doesn’t mean our poll respondents could decide on where to go and what to do in these frazzled, caffeinated joints. Lots of readers mentioned clubs: 111, Kvartira, Bumerang, Restown and the now-defunct Ultra rave club. But the greatest number wrote down ”in bed” or ”at home.”
Our polling sample may make Kyiv seem more lame, geriatric and pooped a city than it actually is. As for us, if we’re anywhere at 3 a.m., it’s at the Hairy Lemon restaurant on a deadline night, drinking beer and eating omelets after putting the newspaper to bed in our offices upstairs. The joint is quiet then, and the waitresses even more attentive and friendly; outside the plate-glass windows, Lesi Ukrainky is nice and moody; and given the time differences, we’re on schedule to catch prime-time sports broadcasts from North America. We like it. Other votes that caught our attention went to anywhere with friends, in a threesome, at a house party and Paris.
But we wouldn’t mind being in bed, either.
Best nightclub: Tchaikovsky
Journalists are not huge clubbers, to be honest. The late hours get to us, and as we get older, our skulls become less resistant to the side effects of sound-system volume: headaches, that high-pitched ringing in our ears.
But Post readers do get out once in a while, and this year they’ve given the Best Of nightclub award to Tchaikovsky.
Located, eccentrically, in a fascinating bi-level space atop the Bessarabska Market, it’s where the vast majority of cool Kyivans (meaning Post readers, too) like to go, liking it for being just that – cool.
Seeing the likes of Kyiv Post publisher Jed Sunden, former French Cultural Institute attache Benjamin Loustau and even the mighty Klitschko brothers, Tchaikovsky opened to quite some buzz as the spring began and people were looking for a new club to call home. Nightclubs in Kyiv open and close often enough that what’s hot one day is not the next.
Unlike other clubs mentioned, such as Opium and Moda Bar, but similar to second-place finisher 111, Tchaikovsky almost immediately throws clubbers into a cacophonous world of light and sound.
By the time you’re past the door and climbing the staircase into the chandeliered inner sanctum of the place, you’re feeling good, and ready for what there is to find up there: not just another meat market, but an elegant matrix of posh corridors, defined by secret-seeming spaces and shadowy nooks.
And that’s just in the antechambers; that’s not even to mention the balconied main room yet. Anyone hitting that warmly-appointed and elegant dance-floor space, everything is invigorating volume, soothing lighting that get your head in the right space, and girls, girls, and more girls. It’s pretty clear. Yes, this is Kyiv, one of the girl capitals of the world, but at Tchaikovsky it’s ridiculous.
If this place can be beat, it hasn’t been yet (at least not year-round, as one respondent mentioned Ozone, or the Green Theater by local lingo, as tops in the summer).
Others receiving votes were Art Club 44, Caribbean Club and Fusion.
A German connection proves most popular for travel
Lufthansa gets the nod as the best airline servicing Kyiv. Sophia Loren thinks so. She flew Lufthansa to Kyiv for the Molodist film festival.
Left, typical strollers on Kreshchatyk, that place in Kyiv from which everything else is accessible (and Kyiv’s best place for a Sunday stroll). The Pyrohovo Folk Architecture Museum, above, was voted best day-trip destination.
It’s become a lot easier to get to and away from Kyiv in a scant two years. High-speed trains now link Kyiv to Kharkiv and to Simferopol by way of Dnipropetrovsk. Soon a modern highway will link the capital with Odessa on the Black Sea, and that’s just to speak of internal travel.
Externally speaking, major airlines servicing Kyiv now offer more options, with more business class seating than ever before, to far more destinations and with far better service, too.
Also worth noting: Local carrier Aerosvit now links Kyiv with Bangkok, Abu Dhabi, New York and Toronto; and soon New Delhi. And Ukrainian International Airlines now offers up more flights to more European capitals than ever.
And it’s not just the ex-pats traveling here and there, either. With increasing wage parity with the West, Ukrainians, too, are taking to the skies. Many named Turkey the best regional travel option (for $300 or less).
Then there are the local haunts. Why leave Kyiv when you don’t have to? We polled this year to find out the best walking tour of Kyiv, and then polled again about the best day trip, best regional travel destination, best beach and best view of the city. All of it only serves to remind us all that Kyiv is not only a great place to live; it’s a great city to see.
Best airline serving Kyiv: Lufthansa
Two years ago, in another Best of Kyiv edition, the Post considered all sorts of sub-categories when we got around to rating airlines: best food, best business class, and so on. But this year we figured what the heck, let’s keep it simple. And this is what we concluded: German carrier Lufthansa deserves to be in first place, beating out Star Alliance partner Austrian Airlines (which finished fourth), previous winner British Airways (which took third) and KLM (who must fulfill the duty of a Best Of winner should this winner be unable to continue in her – ahem – it’s reign.)
Lufthansa has earned its wings, so to speak, for just about every reason you could come up with. They tend to be on time, at least in our experience; the food is, by airline standards, exceedingly good, and served with real metal cutlery (don’t tell the Department of Homeland Security); the quintessentially professional staff goes out of its way to accommodate costumers, which is rare in an increasingly inhospitable and arrogant airline industry; they fly everywhere we would want to fly; and their Web site makes it easy to book online.
We could go on and on. And even if our polled Post readers hadn’t had enough reasons to vote Lufthansa their No. 1 airline servicing Kyiv this year, Post staffers would have anyway. For all we know, Sophia Loren would have, as well. The Italian film icon flew to Kyiv on Lufthansa to attend the Molodist International Film Festival this year.
Best beach: Sun City Slavutych
There wasn’t much sun this summer to speak of, and we can remember wearing sweaters in late June, but we were inclined to include this category anyway. Maybe the sun will make an appearance next summer. It could happen.
Even if the weather this year wasn’t great, Kyivans still take to the beach like Bessarabska Market vendors take to overcharging foreigners, so we got a lot of responses in this poll category. The leader of the pack, Sun City, has lots of tanned bodies and a cover charge to keep out the riff-raff (most of it, anyway). Plus, if you run out of beer, you don’t need to look hard to find the nearest kiosk. They have a slide, a clean pool and even a massage table for those really wanting to relax.
Lots of other votes were received for other locations: Hawaii, South Carolina and various additional places far, far from Kyiv. Responses received for those beaches in and around Kyiv included Hydropark, the Hydropark gay nude beach, Obolon and Desyanka.
Best Day Trip from Kyiv:
Pyrohovo Folk Architecture Museum
It’s as predictable as beer bottles on Kreshchatyk on Independence Day: poll our readers on what the best day trip out of Kyiv is and at least one person will suggest Chernobyl.
Actually, it’s not such a bad idea given it gives you a sense of perspective on the dangers of nuclear power and on one of the most significant events of 20th century history. One of our reporters recently joined a day trip to the site, and came back awed, impressed by the horror that that nightmare evoked in him. But we generally like our daytrips a little easier on the soul. Chernihiv is a nice summer day trip. We enjoy sitting in the marshrutka with a bag of pretzels and a book, and alternately dozing and staring out the window at the gorgeous summer fields as we wend our way northward. Chernihiv, one of the country’s most historic cities, has beautiful churches, a pretty park in which to eat shashlik next to a statue of Shevchenko in his Byronesque young-man mode, and a nice little museum.
Uman garnered votes, too, and it’s just a couple hours south of Kyiv on the road to Odessa, accessible by car, bus or marshrutka. It’s where the Soviyivska Gardens are, laid out by a 19th-century nobleman as a gift to his wife; they’re a stroller’s paradise, with trees, flowers, fountains, bridges and ponds. Buy an illustrated map out front, and find all the pagan statues hidden amidst the greenery.
The majority of readers, though, said they’d make it the open-air Pyrohovo Folk Architecture Museum. One reader this summer wrote us that the Pyrohovo “has to be one of the world’s best folk architecture museums – better than in Romania, Helsinki, Stockholm and Lviv.” Between the historic buildings, strolling, horseback riding, photo ops and excellent settings for picnics or wedding receptions, Pyrohovo is stacked. And it’s the Post readers’ choice for Best Day Trip from Kyiv.
Best place for a Sunday stroll: Kreshchatyk
Indeed, Kreshchatyk was the most popular, and the obvious, response from our readers when we polled them in this category. But there were others.
One reader wrote: “I would recommend a visit to the parking lots outside the government ministries to see all the $100,000 vehicles in this ‘prosperous’ country.” Good heavens: that’s just a tad sour. Another proposed St. Sophia’s Cathedral, “the heart of Ukrainian Christianity.” He explained:
“The burial site of Ukrainian rulers, the building exemplifies the heart and soul of Ukrainian culture.” And another correspondent agreed: “I take first-time visitors to the squares at St. Michael’s and St. Sophia’s. When people stand between these two remarkable cathedrals with Bohdan Khmelnytsky on his horse pointing toward Moscow, it gives an impression of the beauty and the long, sometimes sad, history that is Kyiv’s.”
Other readers offered Andriyivsky Uzviz or the Pecherska Lavra as places to take visitors. The gorgeous riverside monastery obviously has its appeal, but the poll found that a minority of the people who’ve gone there were turned off by the dead monks.
But back to Kreshchatyk, which wins this poll category hands down.
Because after all, as one poll respondent explained, “it’s the center of the Kyivan world; that place from which so many other places in this city are accessible.”
This is Kyiv’s Times Square, the place from which you have to start. Hike uphill from European Square, or take the bus, and you’re at Mariyinsky Palace, promenading in the beautifully renovated park, taking in the view of the Left Bank and watching brides in their white dresses swoop around on the terrace, having their pictures taken. Cut up on one of the streets that irradiates off Maidan, and you’re between St. Michael’s and St. Sophia’s Cathedrals, surrounded by golden domes. Philharmonic Hall is accessible, as are government buildings, the uzviz down toward the funicular and into Podil, and the Pedestrian Bridge. Head down to the other end of Kreshchatyk and you’re accessing Bassarabska Market, the shops of Chernovoarmiyska, and more. Walk up Prorizna and you’re at Zoloti Vorota, from which it’s a hop to the National Opera Theater and the street life of Bohdana Khmelnytskoho. And on and on.
Post readers have to be forgiven for being obvious, but sometimes things just are.
Best travel agent: Sky Travel
It’s amazing to think that of the more than 150 different travel agencies in town, Kyiv Post readers were able to narrow down the range and vote, overwhelmingly, for just one.
To repeat clients of Sky Travel, that’s not so amazing, really. The high level of service they’ve come to expect from this great little establishment is something they can’t keep to themselves.
Many friends of the Post use Sky Travel, and for many reasons. Sky works well in English, for one thing. Also, they’re exceedingly patient when listening to you go on about which airline you’d prefer (you really want to collect those air miles, right?), about what time you’d like to arrive and about how much you’re prepared to lay down in cash.
One friend of ours who left Kyiv on the spur of the moment, determined to make it back to the States in time to catch Independence Day fireworks, had a helpful customer service rep at Sky Travel find him a round-trip flight plan on his favorite airline, and for what seemed to us a surprisingly low sum. He was prepared to pay more, but thanks to Sky Travel, he didn’t have to, and he was in New York on time, eating hot dogs and drinking beers while the sky exploded in color above him.
That anecdote has always rubbed us the right way; it testifies to the fact that Sky has the right attitude, and will think and work on the fly.
We also like Sky’s weekly mailing list, which offers flight-deal and charter-trip gems.
When it comes to going the extra mile for its customers, many travel agencies do a great job, but only one – Sky Travel – deserves to win this year’s Best of Kyiv honors. We offer them our congratulations.
