It’s not easy to go bad at Kyiv’s new healthy restaurant Good Girl.
The place sticks to the good-for-you lifestyle concept serving breakfast and dinner. For example, they don’t use sugar and lactose and mostly work with products from local farmers.
Good Girl opened less than half a month ago on one of Kyiv’s busiest business streets, Mechnykova. It’s a new restaurant by the owners of Milk Bar, the city’s trendy place famous for serving a wide range of tasty American-style desserts.
Vegan and healthy food venues have been popping up in Kyiv lately, but many of them don’t set the bar high for tasty food, good service, convenient location, unique concept and environmental responsibility. Good Girl does just that.
The restaurant doesn’t have any sign outside yet, however, it’s still easy to find. The place is located right next to one of the exits from Klovska metro station — it’s a corner part of the building number 7 of Mechnykova Street. The entrance’s wall-sized windows that look dark from the outside have striped awning canopy above them. But the key to finding the new restaurant is actually its entrance adorned by two large vases filled with dried plants.
I decided to start my day at the restaurant and try out their breakfast options.
It is impossible to book a table for the morning and day time at Good Girl: Before 4:30 p. m. it works on the first-come, first-served basis seating guests from a line one by one, similar to its sister restaurant Milk Bar. As for dinner time, the restaurant’s guests can book a table for after 5 p. m. every day.
So I came at 10 a. m. on a working day having no reservation. There was no issue with seating, however, the place was crowded — something I didn’t expect.
I entered the restaurant and found myself greeted by a waitress right away. She helped me with picking a table and brought a menu right after.
The atmosphere was filled with lively conversions and music, and designed with seats that resemble city benches complementing each other and creating the image of a busy city venue.
Apart from benches, the restaurant has plenty of thoughtful touches like potted plants, glass vases with fresh flowers and dried spikelets, as well as a huge glass stillage with pottery, which divides the place into two halls.
The whole restaurant has a stylish combination of grey and dark green colors and the latter is actually part of Good Girl’s official style: Their logo, menus, and staff’s uniform is also dark green.
The restaurant offers a wide range of breakfast options including gluten-free oatmeal with chia seeds, banana, and cocoa, smoothie bowl with strawberries, banana, granola, coconut and sesame. Apart from that, they serve eggs Benedict with salmon, spinach and buckwheat flour, English muffin, as well as avocado toast either with shrimp or with poached eggs and vegetables.
But I had my eyes on the breakfast meal called “Good Girl” for Hr 265, which offered a house-made coconut yogurt with granola and berries, avocado toast and an egg — I ordered mine poached.
My meal was ready in a matter of minutes but before it even was served I had already been won over by a bottle of free water, a rare thing in Kyiv, where restaurants don’t miss a chance to cash in on selling a pricey basic drink.
The breakfast was served on a tray with small white plates. I was surprised by how good their home-made yogurt was given that they don’t use lactose, and I certainly didn’t expect my strawberries and raspberries to be as juicy and tasty in March.
After finishing the yogurt, I moved to try the poached egg, which had a plain but good taste and was perfectly cooked. Being a fan of poached eggs, I certainly noticed that the egg wasn’t from a mass production site such as most eggs sold at supermarkets — it had a strong flavor and its yolk was bright. This is the kind of products we, in Ukraine, call “home-like” meaning they are organic and are grown at farms or people’s homes.
I was a bit disappointed, however, by my avocado toast. Although the mashed avocado was fresh and it blended well with the buckwheat whole-grain bread, the dish was a bit too bland lacking colors in taste. Or is it my spices-spoiled receptors speaking?
My flat white with coconut milk (Hr 69) was sourish, strong, and tasty. All Good Girl’s coffee drinks including macchiato, cappuccino, and latte, are made with house-made plant milk — almond, coconut or the one made from chufa sedge (earth almond) with basmati rice.
Apart from breakfast, the restaurant’s day menu, which is served from 8 a. m. until 4:30 p. m. offers soups, salads, “Good Girl Burger” with turkey or veggie patty, zucchini pasta with turkey bolognese sauce and noodles with salmon.
Although I was tempted to try Good Girl’s sugar-free desserts, my breakfast was so filling I couldn’t make myself eat again. So I decided to place a to-go order. My server was helpful describing all the desserts on the showing window — I eventually picked matcha cheesecake with strawberries for Hr 120, which tasted unusual and pleased my sweet tooth, and a mango muffin for Hr 75, which, again, was delicious but didn’t burst in flavors. As for desserts, the place also served carrot cake and key lime pie.
Ordering take-out, I couldn’t resist but get one of Good Girl’s trademarks, enticing smoothies. The restaurant makes the drink in six ways, and my choice was “Healthy Snack” with peach, mango, coconut cream, artichoke, and oat flakes. The smoothie was not only a tasty drink but also a filling option to tame hunger. The place also makes cold-pressed juices for Hr 69–110.
At 4:30 p. m., Good Girl takes a 30-minute break closing their kitchen — guests can still order drinks and desserts during this time. After 5 p. m. the restaurant switches to dinner mode and offers a range of tempting dishes. They serve appetizers such as cauliflower flatbread, guacamole with spelt chips, and tuna ceviche, as well as soups and salads. The entrées include: turkey and veggie burgers, octopus with black rice, farmer’s chicken served with baked vegetables, Norwegian trout with artichoke pure, and a cauliflower steak with mashed Brussels sprouts.
And all of the courses can be complemented with red, white or sparkling wine from the sixteen-option cart.
What added to my pleasant experience at Good Girl was its environmental consciousness. The place uses wooden straws for drinks, and their take-out bags are made from biodegradable material that decays in three years.
The rare find combines everything that is necessary from a good restaurant and even more. It is definitely worth a visit and is certainly a must for those who eat healthy and care about the planet.
“Have you been a good girl?” the neon sign hanging on one of Good Girl’s walls reads.
Well, it’s almost impossible not to be at a place like this.
