Canned coconut milk? The best selection of DVDs? Good picture frames? Dip? We found 'em all.
imes you feel you have to know someone to get something you really need. Not any more.
Here’s a list of places that stock things easily found in the West, but not around here.
1. Exotic and Hard to Find Foods: Bessarabsky Market.
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| Coconut milk, an exotic item at Bessarabsky. (Photo by Oleksiy Boyko) |
Unmistakable Bessarabsky Market sets the city standard when it comes to getting every last thing on your pre-supper shopping list: fennel, pea pods, ripe avocados, white and green asparagus, arugula, jalapeno peppers, cilantro, mint and other fresh herbs.
We’ve also recently found dried chick peas and canned coconut milk (Hr 15 for 400ml; ask near the exotic fruit stands), so doing Middle Eastern or Thai food for supper has suddenly become much, much easier.
Of course the prices are outrageous: It’s Bessarabska, where nothing comes cheap because the vendors have fresh everything, even in mid-winter, and they know you don’t.
2. Kosher Foods: Central Synagogue Kosher Market.
We’ve given this place a name because there isn’t one outside the store, which sits anonymously sandwiched between the old Synagogue and Makabi kosher restaurant on Shota Rustaveli.
Inside this little gem you’ll find huge tins of Starkist tuna; canned chick peas (Hr 17 for 560 ml); Heinz BBQ sauce; Western breakfast cereals; kosher meats and sausages; kosher wines; kosher breads and pastas; motzah balls; and lots more.
3. Good Gifts and Gift Cards: Tendence at 4/27G Gonchara and Globus (1st phase).
Need to buy a gift for someone? Tendence, a quiet store tucked away on a lovely square off Artema, ought to be your first stop. Two levels’ worth of excellent things to buy for someone close to you – from lovely pens and sculptures to desk-sets to furnishings to candles to vases and bowls to lovely things to hang on the wall. There was even, last we looked, a handy magnetic dartboard. The help is as soothing and charming as the location.
4. Picture Books about Kyiv and Ukraine: Budynok Podarku at 5 Lesi Ukrainky.
The generic name of this place (it translates as “House of Gifts”) conjures up images of shelves upon shelves of bland, Soviet-era schlock. But on a counter separate from some of the less desirable items is an inconspicuous stack of picture-filled history books about Kyiv. Send some to your Diaspora aunt back West.
The books have clever names like “Kyiv” and “ Ukraine,” they’re between Hr 60 and Hr 270 in price, and several are in languages other than Ukrainian or English.
5. Nice Photo Albums and Picture Frames: Fujifilm in Globus (1st phase).
Good pictures can’t go in just any album or frame. Nobody wants to look at them like that: They deserve better.
Fujifilm on the bottom floor of Globus has heaps of frames and albums that aren’t over-priced, despite their regal location. Get nice pocket-sized albums for 100 pictures for just Hr 19 and huge National Geographic-inspired wads holding 300 photos for Hr 95. For frames, this place has lots of original styles with unique (not ugly) borders from Hr 29 to Hr 59. And they’ve got a digital do-it-yourself photo center for quick processing of photos on CD and computer diskette.
6. The City’s Best Collection of DVDs: Petrivka.
People are going crazy about DVDs these days, and no wonder: In a city of perhaps four million, there has never been a single theater consistently playing movies in English. Butterfly at Petrivka used to. Kyiv cinema used to. Now no one does.
Anyway, Petrivka has only gotten better of late. The market has modernized, it’s easier to get around, and a glut of DVDs on the market means prices have fallen from about Hr 80 two years ago to the Hr 25 for a single-movie disk. We recently picked up “Fahrenheit 9/11” for Hr 25, “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” and a three-in-two combo of “The Red Dragon,” “Hannibal” and “The Silence of the Lambs” for Hr 50.
7. Vinyl Records: Eurostar in Mandarin Plaza, 5th floor.
The city’s best deejays don’t exactly show up at this swank little shop to flip through records like extras in “High Fidelity.” Eurostar is costly, that’s why; prices range from Hr 86 to Hr 230 and up, which is a lot for vinyl. But the selection, though limited, is decent, and staffers here are near-audiophiles, as we’d like them to be. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t sell “plastynky.”
If you have a turntable and want some new records to play, at least there’s one store that can help you.
8. Coffee Go: Dim Kava (various locations).
Ukrainians are becoming tired of instant coffee, but as their taste for coffee improves, they’re also running out of time to enjoy it. Forget about sitting down for a cup of hot java: the pace of a modern, Western-style life demands things be grabbed on the go. Westerners take it for granted that coffee can come in vaguely-insulated Styrofoam or paper cups and downed on the way to the office. But in Ukraine that was unheard of. Enter Dim Kava.
These small coffee shops across the city dole out cups of that steaming liquid (for a reasonable Hr 6 for a cappuccino) and will of course give it to you to go, and with a proper lid to boot.
9. Nice Stemware and Silverware: Farfor Fayans at 34 Khreshchatyk.
Most tableware and stemware in Kyiv is garbage, or overpriced, ugly and an insult to any respectable dinner party. Farfor Fayans has a lock on elegant, quality merchandise, from stemware and silverware to virtually everything for the home.
Crystal stemware goes for Hr 99 to Hr 139 per piece for the Bohemian brand, from the Czech Republic; Hr 170 to Hr 200 per piece for the German stuff.
Silverware from Portugal starts at Hr 279 for a six-person set. They even have amazing china on the main floor and a new linens section in the basement.
10. Chewing Tobacco: Fortuna Smoke Shop at 6 Baseyna and Volodymyrsky Market.
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| North Americans, and other chewing tobacco fans, can find “dip” at Fortuna and Volodymyrsky Market. (Photo by Andriy Porokhnenko). |
It’s surprising how many North American guys we run into in Ukraine miss dip – that is, chewing tobacco, that uniquely New World (and gloriously disgusting) habit. We like dip, too, especially now that American football season and the baseball playoffs are coming around to bring out the hillbillies in us. So we’re glad to learn, via our friends at our sister-publication Afisha, that chaw is available at Volodymyrsky Market and, it’s rumored, at the Fortuna cigar shops on Zankovetsa and B. Khmelnytskoho.
Copenhagen and that hair-raising cherry-flavored Skoal are available, we’re told.
