Work through the list in order. Hide the notes when you know what to do.
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Eat borscht with pampushky
A beetroot soup on meat stock with cabbage, served with sour cream and garlic pampushky. The colour should be deep ruby rather than brown.
The beetroot goes in late and is acidified, or the colour turns brown. The pampushky are dipped in garlic sauce and eaten alongside rather than crumbled in.
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Try varenyky
Boiled half-moon dumplings filled with potato, curd cheese, cabbage, cherries or berries. Savoury ones come with crackling and sour cream, sweet ones with sour cream and sugar.
Cherry varenyky are a summer thing and come with the berry juice. Fried after boiling with onion they become a genre of their own, and you can ask for that.
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Eat deruny
Pancakes of raw grated potato fried until the edges crisp, with sour cream or a mushroom sauce. A plain dish that lives entirely on the freshness of the potato.
The batter cannot be made ahead; grated potato darkens within minutes. The version stuffed with meat is baked in a clay pot.
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Try salo
Salted or smoked pork fat sliced thin, with dark bread, garlic and mustard. It is eaten as a snack rather than used for frying.
Good salo is white with a thin seam of meat and melts rather than chews. Markets let you taste before buying, and haggling is normal.
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Try holubtsi
Cabbage leaves stuffed with mince and rice, braised in a tomato and sour cream sauce. The meat-free version with mushrooms, buckwheat or millet is as common as the meat one.
The small ones made with fermented cabbage are the Zakarpattia version and are sourer. Sour cream goes straight into the bowl.
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Eat chicken Kyiv
A chicken fillet wrapped around cold herb butter, breaded and fried. The butter should run out when you cut it, and that is the entire effect.
Cut it carefully and over the plate; the butter is hot and spits. The bone in the classic presentation is a handle rather than decoration.
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Try banosh
Cornmeal porridge cooked in sour cream with brynza cheese, crackling and fried mushrooms. A Hutsul dish from the Carpathians, served in a cast-iron pot.
It is cooked in sour cream rather than water, which gives the creaminess. The brynza is sheep's cheese and salty, and it carries the flavour.
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Try kruchenyky and pechenya
Meat rolls stuffed with mushroom, cheese or vegetables and braised in a sour cream sauce, plus pechenya, a pot roast with potato and mushrooms.
The pot is sealed with a disc of dough that is eaten along with the dish. It comes to the table in the pot and stays hot for a long time.
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Try kholodets
A meat aspic set in its own stock with garlic, served cold with horseradish or mustard. A winter and holiday starter rather than an everyday dish.
No gelatine is added; it sets on its own from trotters and ears. The horseradish comes separately and is sharp rather than creamy.
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Try pickles from the market
Fermented cabbage, salted cucumbers, tomatoes, mushrooms and soaked apples sold loose from barrels. An essential part of the table with meat, salo and spirits.
The cabbage is genuinely fermented rather than vinegared, which makes it milder than pickled. Tasting before buying at the market is normal and expected.
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Try the Kyiv cake Desserts and pastries
Two meringue layers with cashews and a charlotte buttercream filling under a chocolate pattern. Created in the 1960s and now a symbol of the city.
The meringue layers should crunch rather than sit soft; a soft cake was stored badly. The original used hazelnuts, and cashews came later.
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Eat syrnyky Desserts and pastries
Curd cheese fritters fried to a golden crust with sour cream, jam or honey. A breakfast on the menu of almost every café in the city.
The curd must be dry or the fritters spread in the pan. Flour is there to bind rather than to form the body.
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Try plyatsky and sweet pampushky Desserts and pastries
Plyatsky are layered home-style cakes with poppy seed, nuts and jam, and sweet pampushky are filled yeast buns. Galician baking, sold by the slice in bakeries.
Poppy seed is taken seriously here and appears more often than chocolate. Plyatsok is cut into squares and taken with coffee rather than tea.
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Drink uzvar Non-alcoholic drinks
A brew of dried apples, pears, plums and cherries, lightly sweetened with honey. Drunk cold all year and required on the Christmas Eve table.
It is served chilled rather than hot and needs several hours to infuse. Smoked pear in the mix gives a smoky note and marks a homemade uzvar.
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Try riazhanka and kefir Non-alcoholic drinks
Riazhanka is baked milk fermented to a creamy thickness with a caramel flavour. Milder than kefir and drunk on its own or at breakfast.
The beige colour comes from baking the milk rather than from additives. Homemade riazhanka is thicker than the shop version and has a skin on top.
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Try nalyvka and horilka Local alcohol
Homemade infusions on cherry, sloe, guelder rose or honey — sweet and not very strong — plus horilka with pepper and honey. Drunk in small glasses with food.
A snack is not optional: salo, a salted cucumber, dark bread. Medovukha, a low-alcohol honey drink, is a separate thing and also worth trying.
