Hi, my name is Alexa Matthews,
and I'm the face behind Eatingnyc on Instagram.
One of my most tried and true restaurants in New York City
is Veselka in the East Village.
Veselka has been around for so many years
and it is just such a New York staple.
I don't know anywhere else in New York City
where you can get such authentic Ukrainian food.
(bright upbeat music)
My grandfather started this business in 1954,
candy store in Houston, a real, true five-and-dime.
He was a Ukrainian immigrant.
He was escaping Russian oppression in the late 1940s.
When my grandfather immigrated from Ukraine,
he saw America as a land of opportunity.
Veselka means rainbow in Ukrainian,
and this restaurant to my grandfather was his pot of gold.
This restaurant started as a simple candy store
with soups and sandwiches,
and is now morphed into one of the best
24-hour restaurants in the country.
(air whooshing)
Our top items are Ukrainian borscht,
any of our fillings of pierogi, or we call vareniki,
the next would be potato pancakes, or latkes.
We sell more than five thousand pierogies a day
and a hundred gallons of borscht.
(bright upbeat music)
These past few weeks have been very difficult
for myself and the staff.
We all have family and friends in Ukraine.
I decided, as soon as the war broke out,
that I would donate all the sales of our borscht
to Ukrainian relief efforts.
And to date, we've sold $50,000 worth of borscht.
(air whooshing)
With everything going on right now
it feels really good to support a Ukrainian-owned business,
and this is a really delicious way to do it.
So while Jason is rolling the dough,
I'm going to start boiling the vareniki.
Make sure that your water, it always has salt in it.
You just gently toss them in.
Always make sure that they're double crimped.
You never want them to open up.
And you bring that to a gentle boil.
Well, while Jason's doing the dough,
I'm just gonna make the filling.
And so here we have already cooked potatoes.
I like to keep them whole
because I don't want them to be super moist.
Yes. Caramelized onions.
Oh, yes.
Wow.
Yeah, that's the only way you can make them.
That's the thing, flavor.
Yep.
This is our classic filling of our potato filling.
In Veselka, we use farmer's cheese.
Always season up salt and some pepper.
About a tablespoon filling.
You wanna put it smack dab in the center.
You wanna make sure that none of the filling
is touching the edges.
So I take one, put in my hand,
use my finger as a fulcrum,
and I start to crimp.
I like to do three rounds of crimping.
And there you go.
I'm gonna get my pan hot with some butter.
I'm gonna add some caramelized onions
as the finishing touch.
Ah.
These are lovely beauties. So lovely.
(John whistles)
Thank goodness we have chicken kyiv here, honey.
We're gonna have some chicken kyiv.
I understand, but I still wish I had that.
I know. That would be good for dessert for sure.
Mm, no, the appetizer, baby.
And dessert.
You don't have a sour cherry for your dessert?
Mm, mm, mm.
So beautiful, you guys.
So I'm gonna plate some up for you right now.
One of the favorite ways I like to eat them.
Chef, what's your second favorite cuisine?
What do you love to cook
when you're not making Ukrainian food?
Oh, that's a tough one.
That's tough, right?
It is very tough.
Like I said,
with the vareniki, I've made them seasonally
and I like seasonal food.
So whatever's happening.
I love to shop at the farmer's market.
That's what inspired us--
Yeah, me too.
--to make the different vareniki.
So here you go, Rachael.
This is how we like to serve it.
A little dough.
(air whooshing)