LAURA: As they say in the Ukraine, “[Unpronounceable word]!”, which means “Welcome, please sit down and stuff your face!” And that is exactly what we did at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant. Watch our video to see us chow ‘n chat about borscht, varenyky and studenetz, a…

Gah. The thing perhaps I dislike most is when people say “the Ukraine”. It’s the “the Ukraine”, it’s “Ukraine”. Grammatically speaking there is no need for that article and its use most likely started because some people didn’t speak English all that well.

Putting that aside, we’ve always called the jellied meat holodetz’ which goes to show further that Ukraine has three hundred different words for every food. Or maybe people from western Ukraine are just special and name things the way they like it. But really, there is basic stuff that mu mother’s and father’s families call different things… and they’ve always lived about 50 kilometers away from each other!