Ledger

Have you ever desired to

have a bite of your national spirit

while you’re abroad? It’s really

exciting to find an oasis of your

own culture halfway around the

world. We were lucky to have

such a chance.

We expected a Russian

restaurant, but we went to a

Ukrainian one. The Cheremosh

is located in the James Shopping

Center near TCC.

Cheremosh European Café is

a very funny name for a restaurant.

Actually Cheremosh is a

place in Ukraine.

As we learned later, the

owner of this café comes from

that region. And why European?

Although Ukraine geographically

is a part of Europe, we

Russians don’t consider it to be

a European country. That’s why

the restaurant name sounds a

little bit weird to us.

We got a menu and started

speaking English with the

waitress. But she turned out to

speak Russian. Gazing through

the dishes’ names, we laughed

out loud, picked borscht, pelmeni

and hot Russian tea (we

were wondering what a special

Russian sort of tea it was. Tea is

not grown in Russia).

The borscht tasted as if we

were at our Grandma’s kitchen.

The ball of sour cream floating

in the soup reminded us of our

regular Sunday meal with our

families.

The pelmeni, filled with

chicken meat, seemed to be

homemade. Really delicious!

Actually we didn’t notice

anything special about the ‘hot

Russian tea’. But who knows,

maybe we are so used to it that

we couldn’t feel the difference

between tea at home and the one

served in the restaurant.

After our meals, we were

close to feeling like we were

back at home, but what prevented

us from that was the absence

of a national atmosphere. We

would say the decorations lacked

the Russian-Ukrainian spirit.

Regardless, we had a great time

in the restaurant no matter what

nationality was presented.