PS21 - Ternopil
November 14th, 2005: Ternopil
One November evening in Ostroh, I met a fellow from Pakistan named Shan. We hit it off, and he invited me to come visit him and his friends in Ternopil. It turns out that there is a thriving community of Middle-Eastern and Central-Asian medical students there.
"Oxana suggested that I should be taken to the authentic Ukrainian
restaurant in town. I recoiled in horror, not wanting to be subjected to
generous servings of potatoes and salo (pig fat) at a mythical Your Ukrainian
Kitchen (YUK). Don’t get me wrong; I like Ukrainian food, and anyone who
knows anything will tell you that, in culinary terms, the Ukrainians are
surpassed only by the British. Nevertheless, I acquiesced, and as it turned
out, it was a good thing I did – the restaurant was spectacular! The décor
was assembled from the personal collection of the owner who had traveled
across Ukraine during the sunset years of the Soviet era and bought many
old things of value. As a restaurant, it could have been a folk museum,
but this isn’t to say that the food was neglected. We were just there for
desserts, but the cakes were among the best I’d ever had, and I’d not had
honeyed tea before. We ordered off of wooden menus with burned-in Cyrillics
and were served by a waitress in a traditional outfit (sorochka)."
Right: Shan, with Alla and Oxana.
"Bar," Ternopil
