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It was good. For me, it is all about CHEESE vareneky, not potato, not onion.
I remember when we moved out of New Jersey, the community held a party for the family and a very nice elderly woman made me DESERT vareneky. I hated them. I WANTED CHEESE!!!! 60 years later....I think DESERT vareneky's could actually be quite good, but have not seen them for sale.
The menu was basically vareneky and Ukranian borsch.
The vareneky's were made before hand and maybe even frozen. You just throw them into boiling water to cook.
Everybody knows that day old borsch is much better than fresh.
It made me think that a INTERNATIONAL fast food restaurant could be very profitable.
Just pick one or two items from countries that taste good to many palates and are simple and quick to prepare.
Lots of good international fast food...burritoes, American chili, Hawaii has some great dishes, etc. etc.
Even today's kids could cook vareneky. Throw into boiling water and remove when floating!!!
I don't know if the chain is still in existence in Vancouver. That was 1973.
Ukranian food is pretty common in parts of Canada. On the prairies especially. Some refer to Edmonton as
Edmonchuk.
Even in Vancouver every grocery store is going to be selling perogies of various fillings in the frozen food section.
Polish or Ukranian? Most here think of them as Ukrainian, but of course the Poles do have a valid claim, and we tend to use the Polish rather than the Ukranian name(s) like Pedaheh.
The filling can range from cabbage, mushrooms and meat to apples.
Russian cuisine is big on different soups ( did I mention it's cold there? ) so pirozhki go hand in hand with soups.
I automatically ordered some in that "Michelin" restaurant, but their size made me chuckle. They were microscopic, never seen anything like that in my entire life.
So they were turning some staple home-made Russian food into something "exotic" and "upscale" it looks...
(Apparently I can move my home-made shee and borsh into the upscale restaurant category too now..))
And "pierog" ( singular) would mean this - so yes, a pie with other words, that can be either with meat ( fill in the rest of versions) or sweet
( Yep, still "pierog.")
But my question was rather specifically about Ukrainian "fast food" - was it any good?
The Ukrainian restaurant in Wenatchee has Chicken Kiev.
It is almost impossible to cook correctly unless your an expert chef.
I ordered it three times, and twice it was merely good. The third time, the owner was doing the cooking and it was out of this world good.
Truly an amazing dish.
When I die and go to heaven it will be the first thing I order since I know it will be cooked perfectly.
Mhm.
A popular dish in Russia - it all goes back to the Russian empire, and I suspect it had something to do with the decadent French as usual)))
"The history of this dish is not well documented, and various sources make controversial claims about its origin. Since the 18th century Russian chefs have adopted many techniques of French haute cuisine and combined them with the local culinary tradition. The adoption was furthered by the French chefs, such as Marie-Antoine Carême and Urbain Dubois, who were hired by Russian gentry."
( That's why I pointed at that third, *European* layer in the Russian cuisine, because the French chefs reinvented/produced a lot of things specifically for the Russian market back in the day, according to the local taste and traditional foods.)
There are not overwhelming numbers of Thai, Greek, Indian, Italian or Japanese immigrants in my area yet the cuisines are very popular. Your disdain for Mexicans is duly noted.
I think immigration definitely plays a part in it. You say Greek, but I think Middle Eastern cuisine is far more common and easily available. They offer pretty similar fare, but there's simply a lot more recent Middle Eastern migrants out there which makes for a broader and more high quality offering.
I don't think a group needs to reach the level of demographic presence that Mexicans have in California for its cuisine to be recognized and popularized, but you do need enough recent immigrants who go into the gastronomy business (a classic immigrant family business as it provides a good number of jobs that don't require formal qualifications for extended families and has an 'inbuilt' customer base in its ethnic community). That's certainly the case for pretty much all Asian groups in California.
And that's actually why I think Italian food is on its way out in America. There's hardly any recent Italian immigrants and even fewer who're interested in starting restaurants. Most of the recent 'culinary imports' from Italy are trained chefs specifically looking at the fine dining market in the big metros which is of course miles away from the culinary reality of average Americans.
Your average Italian restaurant in an American city today is likely owned by a businessman who bought it from a retiring Italian-American founder 20 years ago who sold it because the kids went off to college and wanted to be something else. That businessman thinks "I'm just going to keep doing what's working, it's not like I know enough about this to innovate", so the place will feed the same ageing boomer crowd the same stuff they've been feeding them for 50 years. It's gonna get by on reputation and nostalgia, but the kids aren't going there. In my millennial circles, "let's go out for Italian" is suggested as often as "let's go out for Polish" i.e. never.
And I'm not counting pizza places..most of the newer ones don't even pretend to be Italian anymore.
I think immigration definitely plays a part in it. You say Greek, but I think Middle Eastern cuisine is far more common and easily available. They offer pretty similar fare, but there's simply a lot more recent Middle Eastern migrants out there which makes for a broader and more high quality offering.
I don't think a group needs to reach the level of demographic presence that Mexicans have in California for its cuisine to be recognized and popularized, but you do need enough recent immigrants who go into the gastronomy business (a classic immigrant family business as it provides a good number of jobs that don't require formal qualifications for extended families and has an 'inbuilt' customer base in its ethnic community). That's certainly the case for pretty much all Asian groups in California.
And that's actually why I think Italian food is on its way out in America. There's hardly any recent Italian immigrants and even fewer who're interested in starting restaurants. Most of the recent 'culinary imports' from Italy are trained chefs specifically looking at the fine dining market in the big metros which is of course miles away from the culinary reality of average Americans.
Your average Italian restaurant in an American city today is likely owned by a businessman who bought it from a retiring Italian-American founder 20 years ago who sold it because the kids went off to college and wanted to be something else. That businessman thinks "I'm just going to keep doing what's working, it's not like I know enough about this to innovate", so the place will feed the same ageing boomer crowd the same stuff they've been feeding them for 50 years. It's gonna get by on reputation and nostalgia, but the kids aren't going there. In my millennial circles, "let's go out for Italian" is suggested as often as "let's go out for Polish" i.e. never.
And I'm not counting pizza places..most of the newer ones don't even pretend to be Italian anymore.
So where do millenials go then?
What do they prefer at this point?
Mhm.
A popular dish in Russia - it all goes back to the Russian empire, and I suspect it had something to do with the decadent French as usual)))
"The history of this dish is not well documented, and various sources make controversial claims about its origin. Since the 18th century Russian chefs have adopted many techniques of French haute cuisine and combined them with the local culinary tradition. The adoption was furthered by the French chefs, such as Marie-Antoine Carême and Urbain Dubois, who were hired by Russian gentry."
( That's why I pointed at that third, *European* layer in the Russian cuisine, because the French chefs reinvented/produced a lot of things specifically for the Russian market back in the day, according to the local taste and traditional foods.)
Another example of this is Olivier Salad (Оливье), it was invented by a cook of Belgian/French descent (he was born in Moscow so technically Russian) in Moscow, and then common people tried to reproduce his famous salad with more common ingredients which produced the modern salad. Since then it has spread all around the world (if one is to believe Wikipedia) and is commonly referred to as Russian Salad in places like Latin America and the Middle East.
Another example of this is Olivier Salad (Оливье), it was invented by a cook of Belgian/French descent (he was born in Moscow so technically Russian) in Moscow, and then common people tried to reproduce his famous salad with more common ingredients which produced the modern salad. Since then it has spread all around the world (if one is to believe Wikipedia) and is commonly referred to as Russian Salad in places like Latin America and the Middle East.
They referred to it as "Russian salad" in Italy too when I was there)))
So where do millenials go then?
What do they prefer at this point?
My instinct says Mexican food in a broad sense is by far the most popular 'ethnic' cuisine today in the U.S.
Followed probably by Chinese food. Others like Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, Middle Eastern (which is actually a group term for what's usually either Moroccan/Algerian, Lebanese/Syrian or Persian) are growing in popularity.
But in big cities there's certainly room for rarer stuff too. In fact, there's an Uzbek place near where I live which is pretty popular. There's Ethiopian places, heck there's a few Uyghur places which have gotten a decent amount of hype. I haven't been but it's apparently a mix of Chinese and Persian cuisine.
Beyond that there's always going to be reinvented, 'hip' versions of the classics, too. For a while people were obsessed with artisan/gourmet burger joints and hipster pizza places. I think BBQ joints have also been 'rediscovered' and made fit for a younger audience. One of the most popular places near where I live is some kind of revamped 'transformed' classic diner concept aimed at the young, rich folks who live here.
The filling can range from cabbage, mushrooms and meat to apples.
Russian cuisine is big on different soups ( did I mention it's cold there? ) so pirozhki go hand in hand with soups.
I automatically ordered some in that "Michelin" restaurant, but their size made me chuckle. They were microscopic, never seen anything like that in my entire life.
So they were turning some staple home-made Russian food into something "exotic" and "upscale" it looks...
(Apparently I can move my home-made shee and borsh into the upscale restaurant category too now..))
And "pierog" ( singular) would mean this - so yes, a pie with other words, that can be either with meat ( fill in the rest of versions) or sweet
( Yep, still "pierog.")
But my question was rather specifically about Ukrainian "fast food" - was it any good?
All sorts of fillings today, some more authentic than others.
Pedaheh is what friends in Edmonton called them. I had homemade ones there years ago. Delicious!
As for fast food. Yes really good. Just by their very nature they are fast food. Not unusual to see stalls in public markets amongst the other quick food options. Not aware of any current chains though...but I can't speak for all of Canada in that regard.
Here's a article on Hunky Bill, the guy that ran the fast food stalls
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Upscale food that can be bought in a bag LOL 
