From Vietnamese to Georgian cuisine, from top-notch to street food eateries — the new edition of the “Best Restaurants Kyiv” guidebook has captured diversity and improvements in the Ukrainian capital’s restaurant scene.
Written in English by French author and editor Maud Joseph, who has been living in Ukraine for six years, the guide lists 130 restaurants, provides pictures, maps and recommendations on what dishes to try.
The third 165-page gastronomic edition, which costs Hr 400 ($15), has already arrived at bookstores in Kyiv.
“When you find a good place, you tend to return to it all the time,” Joseph told the Kyiv Post. “With this (guide), you can explore more.”
Joseph, who worked in media in Paris before, took classes at the Alain Ducasse cookery school in the French capital. She moved to Ukraine in 2013 after her husband received a job here.
She published her first “Best Restaurants Kyiv” guide in 2016, updating it with a second edition in 2017. Apart from Kyiv, the author issued her pink-covered guidebooks listing the top eateries in Odesa and Paris.
Joseph says that 2018 wasn’t the best year for the restaurant scene — eateries didn’t develop much or their quality even decreased.
“I felt I didn’t have much to tell.”
But in 2019, the author came back with another update. She says that two years was enough for new restaurants to open and for the old ones to grow.
The author expanded and diversified her guide in the third edition — it includes 130 restaurants, twice as many as its previous edition.
Now instead of dedicating four pages with several photos to one place, Joseph had no more than two pages for each. And some eateries have only a short description with no photos.
“It depends on my inspiration by a place,” she says.
The book lists both all-time favorite restaurants that have been working in Kyiv for years, such as modern Ukrainian cuisine Kanapa that opened in 2013, as well as the latest addings to the market, such as Dom № 10, a restaurant with mixed cuisine that opened at the end of 2018.
Apart from that, the author shifted from only high-level classic places to all kinds of eateries including those serving street and comfort food.
She says that some of her readers expressed complaints that the second edition mostly recommends pricey restaurants, like fancy Alaska, where an average check for one exceeds Hr 1,000 ($38). So in this edition, Joseph made sure to satisfy any pocket.
For instance, the guide includes Vietnamsky Privet (Vietnamese Hi), a Vietnamese street food spot with moderate prices located on the food court of Besarabskyi Market. Their dishes cost Hr 80–150 ($3–6).
The book is divided into sections by city areas close to the center: Ploshcha Lva Tolstoho and Olimpiyska metro stations, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square) and Podilskiy district, Teatralna and Universytet stations, Klovska and Arsenalna stations, and the rest combined in the “Others” category.
Apart from that, the guide offers a Kyiv map with all the listed restaurants marked, as well as maps of the five areas the book is divided into.
Just like the previous editions, this one uses useful symbols to give a quick understanding of what an eatery offers: cocktails, pastry, wine, business lunch, rooftop view, live music. However, the author has kept the controversial symbol of a “princess” meaning that beautiful people are regular visitors to a restaurant.
In addition, Joseph added ratings of restaurants by categories, such as party places and romantic dinner, Asian and Italian food, wine list and creative food, and much more.
The third edition of the “Best Restaurants Kyv” guidebook captures the diversity and recent improvements of the Ukrainian capital’s restaurant scene. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Three criteria
Although while preparing a new guidebook Joseph goes to restaurants for all three meals every day, she eats out all the time and her life is a constant gastronomic journey. She says she always takes notes as she visits an eatery and sometimes when she doesn’t want to eat she makes trips to new restaurants just to get the first impression.
“The first contact is important.”
Joseph says that there will never be a restaurant in her guide, which has bad food, bad atmosphere and puts no effort to provide good service.
She says that number-one criteria is always food.
Over the years of trying all kinds of food, the author has created a list of dishes that she tries at certain types of a restaurant. For instance, she tastes duck breast at French eateries, Pho soup at Vietnamese, Vitello tonnato and tiramisu in Italian. As for Ukrainian eateries, she says that the must-try dishes for her include borscht, holubtsi (stuffed cabbage rolls) and banosh (corn flour porridge with sour cream).
Another touchstone, the author says, is a pleasant atmosphere, determined by design and decorations, music, people that hang out there, as well as the way tables are set.
“Everything matters,” she says.
She says that the atmosphere is so important for her because, as a foreigner, she doesn’t have that many options for pleasure time. For instance, movies and theater are mostly in local languages with rare screenings and shows in French or English. So eating out is kind of entertainment for Joseph.
“I need to feel comfortable in a restaurant,” she says.
As for the service, the author appreciates efforts saying that people can’t expect the same standards of customer service all around the world meaning they are different in Ukraine in comparison to the ones in Europe.
“Fortunately, we find more and more restaurants in Kyiv where the service is attentive and professional,” she writes in the author’s note at the beginning of the book.
However, not all the restaurants listed in the guide are perfect by all criteria, so in their descriptions, the author gives warnings, as well as explains why a place still made it to the book. For instance, she praises Chinese eatery Rysova Dolyna for authenticity and tastes but notes that the design could have been better.
“Do not judge by the design, settle down, order directly the soup № 097,” the guide reads.
Restaurant scene
Joseph says that it wasn’t easy to select restaurants for the guide. Around 15 eateries open in Kyiv every month, which is around 180 every year.
As they open, however, many get closed for various reasons. The author says that some of the places she listed in the previous editions have been closed since then, however, they weren’t a big loss.
“Good restaurants are still there.”
Since Joseph moved to Ukraine six years ago and started observing the restaurant industry in Ukraine, it has been constantly developing.
She says that compared to 2013, restaurants now tend to add cocktails to their drink menus. And, according to the author, more cocktail bars have popped up in Kyiv.
Healthy-eating has influenced the market, too, she says, with healthy and vegan places gaining in popularity in Ukraine’s capital.
Joseph says that in 2013, Georgian, Japanese and Italian cuisines dominated the market. Although Italian food didn’t get any less popular, the other two are not on every corner anymore. Meanwhile, the restaurant scene has become more diverse with more Asian offerings, such as Chinese, Vietnamese and Indian.
It’s now impossible to find such diversity in other European capitals< Joseph said: they are packed with restaurants serving local food.
“In Kyiv, you can find almost any kind of cuisine.”
