Customer Reviews

The Veselka Cookbook: Recipes and Stories from the Landmark Restaurant in New York's East Village

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you live in New York City, Veselka'a is probably your best friend already; and if you don't, it's worth a trip to New York. The Borscht is the best, as are the pierogis, the soups, and also the tastiest burger. All the best recipes are in the cookbook. The ingredients are accessible and the recipes easy to follow. And if you read the stories as you go along, it's the next best thing to being there. If you love Ukranian food, American food, and good food in general, treat yourself and buy this book. Then buy another copy to give to your best friend who also loves good food. Now I'm waiting for the sequel...

The comfort foods of my childhood were pierogi, filled cabbage, kasha, varnishkas, and cabbage soup. My mother cooked without recipes and over the years some of my attempts to duplicate these foods have been successful, some not. Then my sister told me about Veselka and its cookbook. This tome is my call home to check on a recipe. It brings back memories of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins and siblings gathered around long tables on Christmas or Easter, or around the kitchen table in my grandmother's kitchen. This food tastes like it does in my memory. A visit to Veselka is on the itinerary during a trip to New York City.

This cookbook definitely needs to be in the kitchen of anyone interested in Eastern European cooking.

I bought this as a birthday present for a fabulous cook with Ukranian roots -- she loves it.

I just purchased this book as a gift for my mother, an avid cookbook collector. We are of Ukranian ancestry. Both my mother and I have been to this restaurant before and the food is exceptional. I peeked through the book and couldn't put it down. The recipes look fool-proof and true to the "real thing." I also love that the author includes pictures and history of the restaurant. I appreciate the author's honesty and down-to-earth writing style. He also includes cooking tips for many of the recipes. I am ordering several more of these, even without having tried the recipes just yet. I have faith they will be exceptional! This book is very gift-worthy. :-)

My husband introduced me to Veselka shortly after we started dating. We took a trip to New York so he could show me all of his old haunts from his undergraduate days. This restaurant was on the list of places. He recommended the raspberry blintzes, and he was right. They were delicious. I was so sorry we only got to go there once during our trip. This cookbook was a present for Valentine's Day. Growing up in an Eastern European family pierogies, halupki (stuffed cabbage), and kielbasa were staples of every family gathering. With some of these recipes to add to our ethnic arsenal we're thinking of having a Ukrainian Independence Day party. Bring on the borscht and the polkas!

This book was a wonderful and evocative trip back to the days when I went to school at St George's in the East Village. The recipes are reminiscent of my own Ukrainian family traditions. Just reviewing them brought back memories of my father cooking in our kitchen at major holidays, recreating the dishes from his childhood for us to savor. This book gets as close as it's possible to living with these traditions through food. Loved it!

Second Avenue and 9th Street in New York City's East Village is where it all began back in 1954 when a Ukrainian immigrant named Wolodymyr Darmochwal opened Veselka Candy Shoppe, a newsstand and candy shop. Originally drawing patrons from the local area, the reputation of Veselka grew as the candy shop grew into a cafe and was rebuilt from the bottom up and renovated in 1996 by Tom Birchard (who started working part-time at Veselka in 1967, while a sophomore in college, as the only non-Ukrainian employee) and assumed ownership from his father-in-law, Wolodymyr Darmochwal, in 1975. When Wolodymyr Darmochwal passed away in 1975, the neighborhood was known for its heroin addicts; by the time The Veselka Cookbook was published in 2009, apartments on the same block where Veselka stood sold routinely for over a million dollars and now constituted some of the most sought-after real estate in the city.

This is the story of Veselka verbally and via color and black-and-white archival images; and, this is the sharing of some of Veselka's scrumptious recipes. For, whatever your preference--be it take out, sit in, or do-it-yourself fare at home, The Veselka Cookbook not only provides splendid recipes, but also shares its secrets and stories about celebrity customers, the restaurant's other lesser-known longtime fans, local artists who've adopted it as a second home, its own 'artist-in-residence,' and offers a behind-the-scenes look at how Veselka serves 5,000 gallons of borscht a year and hand makes 3,000 varenyky/pyrohy (pierogi) daily--all this in addition to the easy-to-follow recipes.

Veselka means rainbow in Ukrainian, and its namesake, Veselka, the twenty-four-hour Ukrainian cafe turned landmark restaurant with a staff of approximately seventy-five, offers a smorgasbord of culinary comfort food. Or, it may be also said that Veselka offers a veselka of culinary comfort food sure to satisfy.

Veselka's employees visit Ukraine routinely and say that eating habits have changed tremendously in recent years; the biggest change is that Ukrainians have increased vastly their consumption of vegetables. And, regarding borscht, beet soup, we learn that "while borscht is served throughout Eastern Europe and is a staple of Jewish cuisine (the word bors means 'soup' in Yiddish), it's believed to have originated in Ukraine." There are many other interesting bits of information in this easy-to-read and easy-to-prepare recipe book.

Following a two-page Acknowledgments section (among those acknowledged are: William Hellow, Veselka's graphic designer since 1996, who also designs Veselka's menus; Ben Fink for his contribution of the color photos in the book; and, Petro R. Strawnychy, chair of Plast's National Executive Board, who allowed Veselka to use Plast's logo).

Recipes included are found in chapters on: Soups; Stuffed Delights: Pyrohy (Pierogi), Blintzes, and More; Meat and Poultry; Salads and Side Dishes; Desserts ("Desserts at Veselka fit into one of two categories: traditional Ukrainian or traditional American"); Christmas Eve: a Special Ukrainian Tradition; Sandwiches; and, Breakfast Any Time.

Following the recipes are Menus (two pages, which include Menus for: Thanksgiving, Easter, Mother's Day Brunch, Father's Day Dinner, Birthday Dinner, Summer Cookout, Ukrainian Independence Day [August 24], Buffet Brunch, Picnic Lunch, Box Lunch, Home with a Cold Lunch, Sunday Supper, Weeknight Dinner, and Super Bowl Party). The Glossary is 2-1/2 pages and defines terms used within The Veselka Cookbook; Resources lists 4-1/2 pages of helpful places to look when purchasing ingredients for recipes; and, lastly, the 7-page Index is a handy tool for locating recipes quickly.

Whatever your craving, whatever the time of day or evening, Ukrainian culinary comfort food has been available for over five decades at the landmark Veselka restaurant. The Veselka Cookbook not only will appeal to serious cooks and bon vivants who've relished Veselka's famous recipes at the cafe for decades, but also will appeal to patrons who've visited Veselka while in New York City and wish a souvenir of their visit, or to those who wish to personally bake or cook some Ukrainian or American food.

Veselka serves over 1,000 people on a busy day, and Veselka is almost always crowded during the twenty-four hours a day that it remains open. That Veselka is a successful restaurant with delicious cuisine is a given; that the recipes within The Veselka Cookbook are easy to follow is also a given, as are the informative notes that accompany each recipe.

The Veselka Cookbook is a fine collaborative effort of Tom Birchard with Natalie Danford. Design is by Maggie Hoffman. Thomas Dunne Books, an imprint of St. Martin's Press, published the First Edition in November, 2009. An excellent supplement to The Veselka Cookbook is the website found under the name of the book.

As the current owner and author of The Veselka Cookbook, Tom Birchard, states, "I'm not just an honorary Ukrainian--I'm an extraordinarily lucky honorary Ukrainian, and I hope that reading this book will help you feel a little Ukrainian, too." Five stars plus for a recipe book which is sure to whet your appetite for foods Ukrainian and American, entice you to visit Veselka restaurant, and even, perhaps, try your own hand at making the recipes.

Addendum: To learn more about things Ukrainian, visit the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, please see my comment below this review for further information. Readers, you're also invited to visit each of my reviews--most of them have photos (with notes) that I took in Ukraine (over 600)--you'll learn lots about Ukraine and Ukrainians. The image gallery shows smaller photos, which are out of sequence. The preferable way is to see each review through my profile page since photos that are germane to that particular book/VHS/DVD are posted there with notes and are in sequential order.

To visit my reviews: click on my pseudonym, Mandrivnyk, to get to my profile page; click on the tab called review; scroll to the bottom of the section, and click on see all reviews; click on each title, and on the left-hand side, click on see all images. The thumbnail images at the top of the page show whether photos have notes; roll your mouse over the image to find notes posted. Also, you're invited to visit my Listmania lists, which have materials sorted by subject matter.

Additionally, both kids and adults will find it to be enjoyable and educational to learn the names and locations of the regions/oblasts of Ukraine and test their knowledge by solving the Interactive Puzzle map. Please see my comment below this review for further information.

Moreover, to view excellent slideshows of the 25 regions (24 oblasts and one autonomous republic) of Ukraine (you may even set the length of the slideshow), please see my comment below this review.

I purchased this cookbook for my cousin. the delivery was good and the price very fair. It was an excellant choice. My cousin was very happy to receive it! jerry c

I have to admit I purchased the book based on wanting to relive my past more than as a cookbook. I should explain I guess........I grew up on the upper eastside of Manhattan and from the time my best friend and I were teens back in the late 1960's we would escape to the lower eastside to play in the "hippie" culture back then, often we stopped into Veselka for a bite on the way back uptown. I left the city for upstate NY in the 1970's and later to the deep south and didn't get to Veselka for many years, but fate would once again bring me to the restaurant.

I found myself being a long distance commuter all throughout the 1990's-2002, living and working up in NYC and once again going to Veselka for late night meals when I would close up my job late. So many memories and so much great home style food, a disappearing commodity in the NYC chi chi restaurant scene back then. I often went with another great friend on those late nights and we would sit and remember our youth over great meals. In the past three years I lost both of these best friends of mine to cancer leaving me alone with the memories we had shared for so many years. When I saw the book come up on Amazon I clicked on the buy tab immediately not expecting anything more of it than as a way to keep so many memories of my life intact. I could scan it's pages and remember specific times spent in Veselka with my friends over the span of almost half a century.

What I didn't expect was such a fine collection of recipes! This is a fantastic cookbook if what you are looking for is great homestyle cooking done right. Reading through the recipes I can remember the taste of all the great meals I have enjoyed in the place over the years and now I can create them at home too. I am now retired and living in the deep south so there aren't too many opportunities for an in house Veselka meal anymore, at least not the "in person" kind, but with this book in hand I do look forward to many of the same dishes created by my own hands. Thanks so much to the owner of Veselka for giving me the ability to enjoy my past memories and enjoy the food once again.

My sister and her family always dine at Veselka when travelling to NYC. They were thrilled to receive this at Christmas! Lucky for me they were unaware that this cookbook even existed! Mmmmmmmmm... time to borrow it come to think of it!