An Edible Voyage

January 2017 Almost bite sized, these meat filled dumplings are served with sour cream and make a great accompaniment to a beer.  Vareniki are similar but filled with potato or cheese, or sweet jam and served as dessert.  Find them on most restaurant menus.  At Pelmenya (6 branches across the city) which serves only dumplings, you can compare pelmeni and vareniki with their Italian (ravioli), Chinese (jiaozi) and Georgian counterparts. (khinkali).

September 2019 To stock me up for my journey home, I wanted to find some good, solid Ukranian cuisine.  Puzata Hata was just the place - a cheerful canteen with a wide selection of Ukraine's most iconic dishes, decent quality, and big portions for a small price tag.   The potato vareniki were surprisingly flavourful for what it is effectively a potato dumpling, although, as expected, they were rather mono-textured.  The dill crepe cake was a bit like a salad in cake form.  The crepes gave it an interesting texture but it had a surprisingly overpowering flavour and the liberal mayonnaise made it rather rich. Find these, alongside many other Ukrainian specialities, at Puzata Hata.  There are many branches across the Ukraine, including several in Kiev.