Last night, I met my friend Atsushi for dinner in the East Village at the Veselka restaurant, a restaurant I had not been to in at least 10 years.  I don’t make it down the East Village very often anymore. Although, each time I do, I am haunted by ghosts of my youth.  There used to be a restaurant on E7th Street and Second Avenue called the Kiev.  I would always end up there at 3:00 am after some concert or Hardcore Punk show at CBGBs.  They had the best Mushroom and Barley Soup.  I loved their Perogies.  We always ordered at least one combination Perogi plate with lots of caramelized onions and sour cream.  Unfortunately, the Kiev is long gone.  However the Veselka, another Ukrainian restaurant, is still there and thriving.

My friend had never tried Ukrainian food before, so he acquiesced as I ordered:  mixed fried perogies and cheese blintzes to share, and a cup of mushroom and barley soup for each of us.



Their fried perogies were quite different from the Kiev, or from the way my mother made them for me as a child.  My mother would boil them first, and then pan-fry them in either vegetable oil or chicken fat (gribbons) for color.   The Veselka deep-fried them like an empanada. 



My mother’s (and the Kiev’s) Mushroom and barley soup was thick, but retained enough liquid that it felt like eating soup.  The Veselka’s soup was very thick, more like a mushroom and barley stew.



However, the Veselka’s cheese blintzes were wonderful.  They were thin and lightly pan-fried.  The cheese filling had just the right sweetness (sometimes blintzes can be overwhelming with too much sugar). 





While the Veselka may not have made their perogies and soup the same way my mother made them, I still enjoyed them.  

After dinner, Atsushi and I went to see The Grand Inquisitor, a Dostoevsky play that I had not read before.  As we left and began walking to the theater, we walked past the Ukrainian culture center.  Upon seeing this building I flashed back to ninth grade.  My mother signed me up for a class in cross stitch embroidery.  Every Saturday morning, I would wake up early and take the train from Coney Island to the East village, walk to this building and sit in a room with old Ukraine women that spoke only Russian and no English.  These women taught me to cross stitch.  They made so many beautiful things, hats, scarves, handkerchiefs, each more skillfull than the next.  They made it look so easy too.   

I have always had a love-hate relationship with Russian literature.  My first real exposure to it took place in college, during a class in drama and literature (which was essentially a course in reading plays).  We read Checkov’s Cherry Orchard and The Seagul.  What both challenged and frustrated me about these plays was their headiness.  Nothing seemed to happen, yet everything happened by the end of the story.  It felt as though I was peering into the psychology of deeply unhappy people, and in the process, I got stuck in their misery.  

Needless to say, I did not pick up another piece of classic Russian literature for at least a decade.  Confounded by my lack of experience in Russian literature, I decided, earlier this year, to try again, this time, with books on CD.   First, I bought War and Peace.  I listened to that first disc maybe three times, and I couldn’t engage with the story.  So, I put it down and tried again later with Crime and Punishment.  Determined, I trudged through the first five CDs.  I felt trapped in the mind of Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov, a tortured, depraved and half-mad murderer protagonist.  I found that the story affected my daily moods.  It made me anxious and agitated throughout the day, yet I persevered.  I am nearly finished with it now, just one disc away…  

I cannot help but think that Dostoevsky had a great inner struggle with his faith.  We arrived at a very small and intimate theater on West 4th Street that resembled a converted carriage house.  The play consisted of two actors; one had no speaking part, yet sat on the stage throughout the entire performance.  The other delivered a powerful and commanding monologue for the 55 minute duration of the play.

The premise of the story is that during the height of the Spanish Inquisition, Jesus comes back down to earth and begins performing miracles.  The lead inquisitor sees him, captures him and has him arrested.  The monologue – in fact the entire play – is the one-sided conversation between the Grand Inquisitor and Jesus in his jail cell.  It was intense!

When the play ended, Atsushi and I went to the Belacourt (a bistro on the corner of East 4th and Second Ave) for a glass of wine, some cheese and the opportunity to discuss what we just watched.   We both had a glass of bone-dry Muscat, and three cheeses, one cow’s milk cheese from Vermont, one sheep’s milk cheese from Corsica, and a Cheddar from Oregon. 



Of course, I drove home listening to Crime and Punishment and I am eager to finish it now.  When I woke up this morning, All I could think about is what kind of preparations should I be making for Thanksgiving…