The punky interior of Kyiv’s Italian Edition restaurant has just added a new showpiece: the framed Silver Palm Prize. The restaurant’s concept — boldly “edited” Italian cuisine — was recognized as the second best by the Leaders Club International, a network of foodservice professionals in Europe. And the recognition is more than deserved.
It’s the third time that First Line group, which owns Italian Edition (Italiiska Redaktsiia), has competed in the international Palm Prizes — more than any other restaurant group since the competition was established 26 years ago in France.
First Line’s other Kyiv restaurants, which playfully mix Middle Eastern cuisine — Favorite Uncle and The Life of Wonderful People — competed in 2015 and 2018. For this, they had to win gold at the Ukrainian stage of the contest, which was established in 2015. But in these five years, no Ukrainian finalists had reached the top three internationally until Italian Edition did.
The primary reason Ukraine finally scored at the Palm Prizes is that participants from the European Union countries started to see Ukrainian restaurateurs as equals, says Maxim Khramov, president of Leaders Club Ukraine. The winners are selected by a direct vote of all contestants and other members of the Leaders Club network present at the awards ceremony, so their perception of contenders crucially affects the vote. This year there were up to 1,000 such voters.
“Our main achievement over the years is that Europeans began to perceive Ukraine simply as one of the normal, full-fledged competitors — not some terra incognita that came there as nobody knows who and how,” Khramov told the Kyiv Post.
To change this perception, Leaders Club Ukraine organized gastronomic tours for members of Leaders Club Belgium and Germany, including to Italian Edition. As a result of this “gastronomical diplomacy,” when co-owners of the restaurant came on stage to present their concept, many in the audience already knew them well.
“This time we came there as one of them, not as outsiders. Not better, not worse — just colleagues. And I think that’s why we won — because of this feeling of collegiality toward us created in these five years,” brand chef and co-owner of Italian Edition Vova Tashaev told the Kyiv Post.
The concept itself played a secondary, but still meaningful role in Italian Edition’s victory, both Tashaev and Khramov agree. Besides the newfound collegiality toward Ukrainian contenders, a key was the presentation of the concept and a certain emotion that they managed to convey.
Like other contestants, Italian Edition presented a short video about their restaurant. But unlike most others, their video was masterfully produced — artful, vivid, informative and fun. The last shot referencing the Italian hit TV series “The Young Pope” drew cheers from the crowd.
And when Tashaev was asked by the hosts onstage about the problems restaurateurs face in Ukraine, he said he wanted to talk instead about what he sees as the real problem.
“Let’s better talk about why nobody still knows about Ukraine’s restaurant scene. Thank God at least some of you came to see it — thank you. You’ve seen it, and now you know about the great things happening in our country,” Tashaev remembers saying.
The crowd broke into wild applause and many promised to come to Ukraine, Tashaev says.
‘The non-Italian mess’
Presentation and emotion are precisely what makes Italian Edition’s concept work. The idea of creating another restaurant that tries to modify Italian cuisine seems banal until the waiter brings you something that entirely reimagines Italian traditions — like the Focaccia bread baked as a hollow sphere, consisting entirely of crust.
This Air Focaccia (Hr 119 or $5) best complements a variety of the restaurant’s antipasti dishes — the first course in a formal Italian meal. Italian Edition has Coppa di Kyiv (Hr 119), an Italian pork cold cut with spicy salsa and a Ukrainian twist. The restaurant also serves Salmone Crudo (Hr 269 or $11), or raw salmon, with a variety of citrus fruits like grapefruit, pomelo and calamansi, and Truffle Burrata (Hr 349 or $14) baked into dough with pesto and tomatoes — the restaurant’s hit.
“When I look at classical Italian cuisine, I rarely want to cook it. I want to use it as a basis and do something with it. That’s why Italian Edition is, on the one hand, Italian and, on the other, absolutely not Italian. And that’s the whole thrill,” says Tashaev, who created the restaurant’s menu.
Italian Edition is located at 43 Velyka Vasylkivska St., halfway between the Lva Tolstoho and Olimpiyska metro stations on what is one of the busiest dining streets in Kyiv. It has one floor that provides for high ceilings and about 70 seats.
The visual center of the restaurant is a Renaissance-style portrait of some obscure Pope with the word “love” boldly painted over it in pink. There are other vibrant paintings by Kharkiv artist Andrey Gladkiy, aged mirrors and dozens of mesmerizing statues and sculptures bought at antique stores and flea markets. The largest are the beautiful sculptures of temples and horses brought from Sri Lanka floating overhead.
“It’s our strength that we know how to take some basic and fundamental things and bring them to some fresh, kind of punky, rock ’n’ roll and techno form,” says Dima Zaporozhets, co-owner of the restaurant who is responsible for its interior design.
The Italian Edition restaurant plays with Italian cuisine and design to create an authentic prize-winning restaurant in the heart of Kyiv. (Volodymyr Petrov)
I came to Italian Edition with no reservation on a Tuesday evening and was lucky to get a single seat. I ordered a three-course meal: salad, soup and pizza. The waiters were many, attentive and unobtrusive, with competent English and great knowledge about the menu’s dishes. I waited about 15 minutes for my first dish and about 10 minutes between courses.
The hearty Chestnut Cream Soup (Hr 187 or $7.50) at Italian Edition comes with two surprises — tortellini pasta with a gorgonzola filling and refreshing quince fruit. Supplemented with spices, the dish is splendid and totally worth another try on a cold winter evening.
Another tart fruit complements the restaurant’s All-Green-Salad (Hr 239 or $9.50). Persimmon cut in lean slices lies on top of a variety of greens — different types of lettuce and broccoli — “everything we found on the market,” the menu says.
Tashaev says that the main reason behind the creation of Italian Edition is simply that he wanted to make pizza for a very long time. The restaurant has a dozen kinds, with dough made out of one of three types of wholemeal flour and left to rise for at least 48 hours to add flavor.
I ordered The Master Margarita (Hr 229/339 or $9/13.50), a variation on the typical Neapolitan pizza supplemented with baked burrata cheese and tomatoes. Soft but crispy on the outside, it has that essential taste of being baked in a wood-burning oven. The crusts can be dipped in a ginger aioli sauce served with each pizza.
Italian Edition has ice cream and desserts, of which I tried cannoli (Hr 169 or $7). With farm tvorog cheese, berry ganache and pistachio praline, they practically melt in the mouth. There is also a variety of hot and cold drinks, alcoholic aperitivo and digestivo shots, five exclusive Bellinis and other cocktails at the bar.
The only thing that is completely Italian at the restaurant is the wine — Italian Edition has over 100 diverse, hand-picked wines from all over Italy.
“The number of autochthonous varieties of wines in Italy is limitless. So we decided to leave this one bright piece of Italy unchanged in our non-Italian mess,” Tashaev says.
Italian Edition (Italiiska Redaktsiia). 43 Velyka Vasylkivska St. Mon-Fri 8 a. m. — 11:59 p. m. Sat-Sun 9 a. m. — 11:59 p. m. +38067 603 4343
