olechko

2008 oil on canvas 17,5×12,5 cm

The ladies cooking pancakes in this typical open oven you see on every Paris corner are dressed in full Ukrainian traditional dress.  They are sticklers to their 15 minute breaks and usually collect long ques of customers in between. The top seller filling is the cabbage and mushroom, kvas also available on tap along with some tried and trusted Obolon beer you can enjoy, sitting in the park.

I picked this lady for her bangs - so perfectly appointed and colored - blesk!

This painting is part of my post-Soviet series. Please send your bid by email if you want to purchase this painting.

Girl sipping tea,18.06.08 watercolor pencils on 140 lb. paper

Girl dancing, watercolor pencils in Moleskine

Looking for a fine dining experience, Yuri Uzzband and me came to Korona Vitovta - the best restaurant in Lutsk, standing right at the door of the Lubart castle.  It  all started well, the funnest part came with the bill. at the dinner.  We had one glass of wine each,  and the bill modestly displayed six of each ?! ‘Funny,” thought I and went asking about this number 6. “The foreigner (Yuri) asked for a “big” glass of wine,” explained Luda (our waitress).

By now you (who spent some time in Ukraine) all know  that Ukrainian menus like to trick you with items priced by grams, and then the waiters take the liberty at judging how many of those grams your wallet can handle.   Luda’s stab at this problem exceeded all expectations: 6×50=300 grams of wine. “Why didn’t you bring us the whole bottle in that “big” glass?” we asked, very annoyed. “You should have declined the glass when you saw it was 300 gram”. “Forgot my measuring cup at home,”  I defiantly thought. The worst part was that the wine in question was flat. Be on guard if you see too many kinds of wine by the glass in the menu. It could have been sitting open for months, like ours did.

Appalled at this Luda’s lame attempt to trick us, we demonstratively payed the $25 per glass, promising we’d tell every expat to avoid the place. So now you now.  Btw, with the quick poll via blackberry among his “high-flying” friends Yuri Uzzband concluded, that $25 per glass could  cost at only other place in the word - the Beverly Hills Hotel bar!

The old Dzyga art center in Lviv refurbished and opened it’s indoor restaurnat Pid Klepsydou on Virmenska st. this season. Love the newspaper-like menu, napkin holders made of picture frame cut-offs, authentic vaulted ceilings. The second floor space is particularly nice. And you can go check out the gallery too while waiting for your order. I heard a lot of praise about gtheir chicken intestents soup, xoxo. And, don’t get the mulled wine - they put way too much mint in there.

Today I headed out to share with a few friends the better places to see art on Andriyivksy and in Podil. We’ve stopped by a few art sellers on the street,  five galleries  and took two coffies on our route.  These are the treasures we found:

Some very decent street art (the better works tended to be are sold by the artists themselves, they come out to the market only on weekends). Below are the pictures by  Shumakov V. with his cute little paintings of Pirogovo; Yuri Kachkin with small Kyiv landmark oils on pane; and tiny oforts by R. Sydorec.  All these were small works that did not cost more then $50 a piece - not bad.

The really good staff we found in Gallery 36 (36, Andriyivsky descent) - well-established and non-presumptious (12 years on the market), it sells mid-range (about $500 per piece) local artists. A few years back we bought from there a levkas by Igor Prokofyev - one of those baby-faced  fuzzy figures in late eighteen hundreds settings.

Then we popped into Hochari gallery where I recognized a little cute sculpture by Pylnyk - I am going back to Lviv to pick it up though - once again, I confirmed that the price markup on Lviv art market in Kyiv is 150%  for the same artists’ works!

The well-advertised White gallery current show did not impress us much. The other galleries Karas Atelier and art center by NaUKMA were closed so Zeh was the last spot on our itinerary. And what a treat it was.

Lovely Margo - gallerina at Zeh- let us dig into the back room fare - all the best current contemporary from Kyiv as well as brilliant upcoming stuff from the regions (the gallery specializes on out0of-towners). Now Yuri Pikul has a solo show there till August 2nd. He is only 23 and does very interesting post-photo realist oils of random landscapes and war-era shots.

Yuri Solomko  with his larger-then-life pictures of preserves is also represented there. He is the renowned artist from whom I’ve been lucky to take classes this spring, organized by and for IWCK.

Also we were really impressed with the paintings by Igor Pereklita, an unconventional Transcarpathian with his surreal poster-like paintings of beauties in typical Ukrainian landscapes.

The crawl made me make a list of tree good restaurants to visit on the Andriyivsky in the near future - Za Dvoma Zaycyamy (a guy in general’s uniform greets you at the entrance there, 34 Anrdiyivsky) Parmezan, 36 Andriyivsky) and Vernisazh(down the street from the first two). We ended up taking coffee at Kaffa (Scovorody st) - it has  great decor inside, ample seating outside and  some sumptuous coffee on their menu.

Three bottom pictures are courtesy of Zeh gallery website.

The place whre we could not come into for the longest time becuase of the cloud of smoke that greeted us at the every attempt to enter. Today the crowd was gone (live music gigs are going to resume only in September). The decor is a soviet basement with pre-revolutoin furniture piled on top of each otehr and cave style paintings on the walls. The greatest find were the well stocked Ukrainian bookstore at the very back and the Gogol bordello poster with an autograpth by the bar.     It definitely attracts the bohemian type; I heard they serve the superb Lvivska Persha Brewery beer!

Pushkinska 2

Look at this post on Little Miss Moi’s Nezalezhnosti blog to go nuts over the beauty of this museum under open sky on the outskirts of Kyiv.

This guy wrote an exhaustive guite to Pirogovo in Russian (map of the place provided there on top, which can be very handy). I am linking it here on top as well.

It’s best to bring your own food. No bbq but plenty of picnic tables around. Locally done bbq is too fried or too expensive (if you go to Yarivec’ restaurant on the grounds. It boasts a great terrase in secluded woods and Kyiv prices).

To get there, find the museum on the map - it’s on the road to Odessa. Opean 10-17 daily. Btw, this weekend on July 6, between 17:20-22:00 there will be Ivana Kupala celebration with staged traditional folk rites.

Later on I did a scetch of this wooden church:

I am thinking of making it my permanent home for the last month of this summer. I can not belive we are still stuck here in Kyiv. Right, so are the best and the brightest of Lviv, but that’s because this is where the money is, and hot water in the tab, and regular flights to Europe. But we will be to pass on all that for a month easily I am thinking as I will be happily blogging about my current favoarite city of all times!

The new discoveries of this visit - several solid coffee places:

Svit Kavy

Pid Synyou Plyashkoyu - it was there that we really dug our heels into the groud and said - we are going to be back! Most solid looking 5-table establishment, predominantly a coffee and drinks place, ask for their honey liquer specialty - not as good as my dad’s stuff but really great!

Rooftop cafe at the shopping mall that used to be the old Univermag - very low key, almost fast food place, but with amazing views of the city!

Kilikiya - very beautiful side alley off Virmenska St., it’s quite easy to find by its sign. They serve regular Ukrainian food fare as well as the best hot chocolate and mostly coffee. Their furniture is hade of the heaviest steel, but it’s “ironmonged” very stylishly.

and the regular tourist-heavy Videnska Kavyarnia and the Italiysky Dvoryk

and restaurants:

Opera - the Terrase on top of the Opera hotel across the street from the opera house - very fancy, perfect for dessert, decent wine list also their dinner tasted very good too. Check out the automatic shoe cleaner in the hotel lobby - classic! The views are really hard to beat - you are up there, soaring with the sculptures on top of the opera, checking out the city center rooftops.

For sughtseeing, we went up the City Hall tower, which also provided the best view! Get into the city hall lobby, ride up to 4th floor and follow the signs to “vezha”. After paying your 3 hryvnyas you will have to climb 17 floors on rickety wooden stairs and appreciate the exposed bell tower clock. The view is worth all the trouble. To be continued…

..has its own brewery and a patio, but food there sucks. Do not get there anything but the beer (Slavutych)! Otherwise, people watching, especially on a weekday around lunchtime can be real fun. It offers free WiFi (I have not checked it myself). I got to write up a post about places to get free WiFi around Kyiv now that I come to think of it.

Shato, 24 Khreschatik vul.

We came there for late dinner so camera-phone photos turned no good. So, here’s one from the restaurant’s website. This white-linen place sits on 8th floor above Lvivska square and overlooks the Pushkinska street, up to Premier Palace. The view is breathtaking. The regulars are beautiful people. One girl brought there an accessory/dog so small, Paris Hilton would’ve been jealous had she seen it. I just did not get why the native indians’ portraits on the walls.

Pushkinska str. 42/2