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Delight gourmet store is ready to impress even the most demanding customers. Serhiy Zavalnyuk After years of hardship, the gourmets of our city can rejoice at last. They will be able to satisfy their hunger for exquisite delicacies without having to go out to a restaurant or taking a trip abroad, as the first proper gourmet shop in Kyiv, Delight, opens its doors.

Dubbing itself a “house of delicatessen,” it currently markets itself all over town, luring those who cannot live without the most delicious and quality food. Its first store is located in downtown Kyiv.

Working as a restaurant critic for quite some time and discovering various dishes and cuisines made a gourmet out of me. But, unable to afford most of my favorite meals at restaurants on a regular basis, I had no choice but to learn cooking myself. It has been tricky to locate many of the required ingredients, at least until Delight opened its doors.

The shop offers a great variety of gourmet products you can indulge in, either from time to time, or on a regular basis – depending on how big of a spender you are.

Delight tailors in providing exclusive food items and ingredients, importing them if they aren’t produced in Ukraine. It has all the traditional departments of a food store: fruits and vegetables, groceries, a deli and a sweets section. Plans envision a restaurant opening up on the store’s premises, but in the meantime you can order freshly-squeezed juice or a sushi takeaway right in the store.

The fans of Italian cuisine will be delighted by the great selection of high-quality handmade pasta by Casa Rinaldi. You can find every possible shape, color and flavor of pasta, including cuttlefish ink, spinach and salmon starting from Hr 50 per package. Casa Rinaldi’s olives, canned in oil olive, are also highly recommended.

The store offers chutneys by Cottage Delight, made out of dried tomatoes (Hr 94) and pickled chili (Hr 98). One of the most exquisite flavors, black truffles (from Hr 168 to Hr 418), are on offer as well.

Truly picky cooks would enjoy Delight’s assortment of vinegars and oils. There are plenty of balsamic vinegars – white, pink, black, cherry, garlic, chili, rosemary, as well as matured Gocce balsamic vinegar – from 6 to 50 years of maturity, priced from Hr 230 to Hr 3,219.

Famous Dijon mustard might also tempt your palate. If you feel like experimenting, try the flavored kinds – with white wine or black currants, for example (Hr 35). And for those who want to jump on the band wagon opting for trendy organic food, Delight offers organic jams, honey, coffee, tea and the authentic Canadian maple syrup of several types, starting from Hr 50.

There is an assortment of fresh meat at Delight, including duck, goose and foie gras. As far as dried and smoked meats go, there is plenty of famous Spanish jamon. A fish display may surprise you with some exotic items such as cold-smoked shark, moon fish (Hr 351 per kilogram), and smoked eel (Hr 490 per kilogram), whole tuna (Hr 383), oysters Belon 000 (Hr 63) and White Pearl (Hr 40), royal shrimps and caviar.

The drinks – both alcoholic and non-alcoholic – represent one of the most interesting features of Delight. For example, British James White juices (from Hr 73) are made of fruit that have been grown, squeezed and packed without the use of chemicals. The brand is reportedly popular with members of the royal family. Spanish sparkling juices J&W in champagne-like bottles are made with sparkling mineral water.

Speaking of mineral waters, its choice is truly impressive. It includes Cape Karro from South Africa (Hr 55), Antipodes from New Zealand (Hr 115), Fiji (Hr 69), Icelandic ice water (Hr 55) and Japanese thermal water Fine (Hr 126). An extensive Belgian beer collection includes St. Bernardus ale (Hr 50), Grottenbier (Hr 42), fruity beers like St. Louis and rich dark red Gulden Draak (Hr 30). And there is something else Belgian you must try – a variety of chocolate bars assortment (Hr 57), mesmerizing with its variety of flavors and fillings.


More gourmet options

While Delight is Kyiv’s first specialized shop of its kind, it’s not the only gourmet shopping destination in the capital. The other one is Furshet Gourmand chain, with one supermarket located in the ground floor of Mandarin Plaza, and the other – at Komod next to Livoberezhna metro station.

There you can find expensive cheeses – Parmesan for about Hr 30 per 100 grams, slightly cheaper Grana Padano, and ricotta (Hr 11 per 100 grams).

They have their own bakeries (roughly Hr 10 for a baguette), a decent meat and fish department, pricy brands of pasta, rice and porridge, exclusive kinds of olives, jams, sauces and seasonings. A confectionary features famous Lubeck Marzipans from Germany. Their deli department has dried tomatoes and pickled soy sprouts among a selection of more common things like olives, egg-plant paste and peppers stuffed with feta.

But of course, the gourmet products assorment of Furshet Gourmand is much smaller than that of Delight. You never know what you may or may not find there.

When it comes to cooking Asian (Chinese, Japanese or Thai), finding the right ingredients is difficult but not impossible. There are few places in town offering Asian products. One of them is a kiosk located inside a big food market at Lybidska metro station. If you enter the market and look up and around you, you should be able to spot a sign “Everything for Sushi,” in Russian. The arrow will point you in the right direction. Unlike most stalls in the market this one actually looks like a tiny shop. Go inside and examine the shelves stuffed with the curious looking products. However, unless you know exactly what you’re after, you will have a hard time choosing what to buy.

Shop assistants speaks some Russian, but may not know the common European names like Miso (probably it sounds very different in the original), though they’ll willingly indicate you all the different items you’ll need to make sushi.

Those are nori, rice, rice vinegar, ginger, wasabi, smoked eel … just to name a few. To make other Asian dishes, you may want miso paste (Hr 18 for a small package), tofu (about Hr 50 per kilogram), dried shitake mushrooms, dried seaweed, rice noodles (Hr 20-30) and prawn crackers (Hr 25 per package). Similar kiosks can be found at Volodymyrsky market.


Delight (5 Lesi Ukrainky)

Furshet Gourmand (Mandarin Plaza (next to Bessarabsky market))

Komod (Livoberezhna metro station)

Chinese Market (Lybidskiy market, Lybidska metro station)