Food Critic: Our Granny’s Recipes is a culinary treat

Editor’s note: Eating out in Ukraine is a gamble. Placing your chips on a “sure bet” like an omelet won’t always deliver a jackpot. Confusing menu entries in Cyrillic and unknown ingredients often require a leap of faith. Warning signs emerge as you hopelessly try to summon wait staff who seem trained to ignore clients. When the food arrives, it’s sometimes a winner, but often is not. To bring you honest food reviews, Kyiv Post writers go to restaurants unannounced, pay for their own meals and never accept favors from restaurateurs.

Your Granny’s Recipes

There is one woman in your life who always gets it right. She flutters around you, puts extra honey on your pancakes and cleans up when you are done. She is your grandmother. And it’s her you think of when entering the new food joint on Chervonoarmiyska called “Our Granny’s Recipes.”

The place is sparingly decorated with two neat buffet tables at each end. There are no cupboards clogged with Soviet china or the 1960s transistor radio gathering dust. No black-and-white photos of unknown children of unknown babushkas. All this was a good sign that the eatery cares more about the food than decorations.

It was a leisurely Sunday, but the wait staff didn’t make us wait. A two-page menu with a babushka arranging a pie on the cover was supplied straight away with a smile.

The menu seems to be inspired by Georgian and Ukrainian grandmothers. Some eight entries in the salad section, price ranging from Hr 14 to Hr 30, offer well-known versions of vegetable, beetroot and Russian salads.

Photo by Natalia Kravchuk

It was nice to have the freedom to put sour cream, instead of the traditional mayonnaise, into a tomato and cucumber mix. And just as babushka would, they served it sprinkled with parsley.

Ukrainian borsch (Hr 15) was advertised cold on the menu, which was just right with sweltering temperatures outside.

The restaurant is air conditioned and is fronted by a huge pane of glass rather than a wall. Perched on top of Chervonoarmiyska Street, it has a full view of old, pre-revolution houses with metro Lva Tovstoho just around the corner. Plenty of light and a no-smoking policy make it an ideal place for an afternoon bite to eat.

With small wooden tables, upholstered chairs and a huge babushka’s scarf on the wall, this place calls for a meal with a colleague, a family Sunday lunch or a quiet afternoon tea with a friend. For a date, go elsewhere, as it’s not an evening venue with exposed brick-walls, Hollywood snaps and candle light.

For the main course, there’s a good selection of pan-fried meat, not steak. Fried in local fashion with mushrooms, tomatoes and cheese, the pork chop for Hr 32 was not covered in grease and tasted like a very health-conscious babushka had cooked it.

Photo by Natalia Kravchuk

We ordered Georgian meat dish Kolbdari after a waitress told us it’s like khachapuri – the bread filled with egg and cheese that is a staple Georgian starter. Costing Hr 36, the dish looks like a small pizza with emphasis more on the bread than the meat stuffing. It was an interesting discovery, but I would not order it again as it had a strange sour taste I wasn’t expecting.

Other entries on the menu feature homemade dishes from Bulgaria and the Czech Republic. And don’t forget about the cranberry drink served in old-fashioned tall granulated glasses.

The cafe has its own bakery, so I would certainly go back for their deserts. The cakes look as if they’ve just come out of the oven and have “eat me” written all over them. Traditional Napoleon, Drunken Cherry and chocolate cakes, around Hr 15 a piece, bring back childhood memories. The standout for me was the delicious shortbread with nuts and raisins.

On week days, the cafe has a buffet catering to busy office folk. Still, you don’t have to carry a tray like in other Ukrainian cuisine eateries, such as Puzata Khata, as waiters will serve you at the table. After 5 p.m. and on weekends, you can only order from the menu. And there’s also a bar downstairs you may want to check out in the evening.

Kyiv Post lifestyle editor Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected]