The Ukrainian Restaurant of Windsor

Monica and I have done a fair amount of research about Ukrainian food and what would be served at an Easter dinner celebration. We wanted to taste an authentic Ukrainian Easter dish for ourselves. We googled Ukrainian restaurants in Windsor and found only one. We decided to go there for lunch and upon our arrival we were greeted by a sweet elderly lady named Anna. She began to speak in a foreign language that Monica and I assumed was Ukrainian. To our surprise Monica was able to understand what Anna was asking and quickly replied in Slovak (Monica's native language). We just assumed that Slovak and Ukrainian were very similar languages. PLOT TWIST: The restaurant owner Anna was not Ukrainian but was in fact from Yugoslavia and was speaking Russian to us. It turns out that Russian and Slovak are very similar languages. Anna had simply mistaken us for two Russian clientele and apologized. Monica discovered that Anna was from the same part of Yugoslavia that her mother was from. They talked for a while and discovered that Anna was acquainted with Monica's grandmother. SMALL WORLD! We asked why she owned a Ukrainian restaurant instead of a Slovak restaurant. Anna told us that she bought the Ukrainian Restaurant in 1968 from a Ukrainian woman who had owned it since 1931. This Ukrainian woman taught her how to cook the menu. Anna chose to keep the decor and the menu the same as she did not want to lose her clientele. She is now 80 years old and has been running the restaurant on her own for 40 years. She says Ukrainian food is very similar the Serbian food her mother used to make so it was very easy to pick up. I found it interesting that the Ukraine shares many similarities with other cultures.

Today we had a real taste of the Ukraine and the privilege of eating traditional cabbage and borsch (beet) soup, as well as perogies with sautéed onion and sour cream. Yum! These foods would be served at a traditional Ukrainian Easter dinner. The room was decorated with authentic Ukrainian embroidery, pictures of national dancers, nature and landscape. Anna and her restaurant have been the focus of a number of new paper articles. She is known for her friendly service as well as her fabulous cooking. We really felt as though we had walked into another world, a new culture... Ukraine  

Victoria Turner