These are shocking statements, Zvi! I truly struggle to square these characterizations with my own experience and knowledge. Something has gone terribly wrong with your exploration of these cuisines, it seems to me, and I sincerely hope it can be remedied sooner rather than later, because you’re missing out on some of the most satisfying food available around here…
Turkish food should be understood as one particular (in my view, the superior) implementation of “Mediterranean food” more broadly, with some unique quirks. I recommend checking out the small but excellent Ay Kebab in Bay Ridge. Get the feta cheese rolls, the shepherd’s salad, the fried calf’s liver; and any of the yogurt kebabs, or the grilled branzini or salmon. For dessert, get the tiramisu (yes, really) or the pudding.
As far as Eastern European food goes, that is a larger discussion. You should understand this (as far as it is available to us in commercial form) to encompass three broad categories of dishes, which we might call “Ashkenazi cuisine”, “Slavic cuisine”, and “pan-Soviet cuisine”. (There is overlap between these, as you’ll see, but they are distinct clusters.)
Ashkenazi cuisine is your blintzes, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish, latkes, and so on. The form in which some of these things have filtered to American commercial production is truly dire, I’m sad to say. I can’t speculate as to the causes of this failing, but it’s undeniable. I can say quite a lot about what the elements of this cuisine should be like (my grandmother having been a master of what I take to be right way to do it), but I don’t think that you can find this sort of thing done well in restaurant form (pastrami sandwiches are hardly representative, however delicious they might be), so we can set this aside for now.
Slavic cuisine is the sort of thing you’ll find (though at typically exorbitant Manhattan prices) in the aforementioned Veselka. This category, as you’ll find it represented here, mostly means Ukrainian and Polish food. Chris’s Restaurant in Bensonhurst, a cozy little Polish place, is my favorite local example. Skip the borscht if you go to such a place (it’s never as good as homemade); instead, get things like the pierogis / vareniki / etc. (dumplings), anything involving sausage, any of the meat or fish dishes… and the blintzes, of course. This is satisfying, filling food, with no nonsense: the focus is on the carbs, fat, cheese, and meat.
Finally, pan-Soviet cuisine is a category that roughly encompasses “the sort of food an average Soviet citizen would be familiar with”. (There are caveats to that description, but it gives the right idea.) This includes elements of traditionally Russian/Ukrainian food, as well as elements of the cuisines of the other Soviet republics, to the extent that they were popularized in the USSR broadly (such as plov or shashlyk), as well as things that were popular in the Soviet Union for essentially contingent reasons, like Olivier salad. My restaurant recommendation here would be Vanka in Sheepshead Bay. Get the crepes with red caviar, the pelmeni (meat dumplings) Siberian style, homestyle potatoes with mushrooms; the grilled salmon in white sauce, chicken Kiev, any of the shish-kebabs.
These are shocking statements, Zvi! I truly struggle to square these characterizations with my own experience and knowledge. Something has gone terribly wrong with your exploration of these cuisines, it seems to me, and I sincerely hope it can be remedied sooner rather than later, because you’re missing out on some of the most satisfying food available around here…
Turkish food should be understood as one particular (in my view, the superior) implementation of “Mediterranean food” more broadly, with some unique quirks. I recommend checking out the small but excellent Ay Kebab in Bay Ridge. Get the feta cheese rolls, the shepherd’s salad, the fried calf’s liver; and any of the yogurt kebabs, or the grilled branzini or salmon. For dessert, get the tiramisu (yes, really) or the pudding.
As far as Eastern European food goes, that is a larger discussion. You should understand this (as far as it is available to us in commercial form) to encompass three broad categories of dishes, which we might call “Ashkenazi cuisine”, “Slavic cuisine”, and “pan-Soviet cuisine”. (There is overlap between these, as you’ll see, but they are distinct clusters.)
Ashkenazi cuisine is your blintzes, matzoh ball soup, gefilte fish, latkes, and so on. The form in which some of these things have filtered to American commercial production is truly dire, I’m sad to say. I can’t speculate as to the causes of this failing, but it’s undeniable. I can say quite a lot about what the elements of this cuisine should be like (my grandmother having been a master of what I take to be right way to do it), but I don’t think that you can find this sort of thing done well in restaurant form (pastrami sandwiches are hardly representative, however delicious they might be), so we can set this aside for now.
Slavic cuisine is the sort of thing you’ll find (though at typically exorbitant Manhattan prices) in the aforementioned Veselka. This category, as you’ll find it represented here, mostly means Ukrainian and Polish food. Chris’s Restaurant in Bensonhurst, a cozy little Polish place, is my favorite local example. Skip the borscht if you go to such a place (it’s never as good as homemade); instead, get things like the pierogis / vareniki / etc. (dumplings), anything involving sausage, any of the meat or fish dishes… and the blintzes, of course. This is satisfying, filling food, with no nonsense: the focus is on the carbs, fat, cheese, and meat.
Finally, pan-Soviet cuisine is a category that roughly encompasses “the sort of food an average Soviet citizen would be familiar with”. (There are caveats to that description, but it gives the right idea.) This includes elements of traditionally Russian/Ukrainian food, as well as elements of the cuisines of the other Soviet republics, to the extent that they were popularized in the USSR broadly (such as plov or shashlyk), as well as things that were popular in the Soviet Union for essentially contingent reasons, like Olivier salad. My restaurant recommendation here would be Vanka in Sheepshead Bay. Get the crepes with red caviar, the pelmeni (meat dumplings) Siberian style, homestyle potatoes with mushrooms; the grilled salmon in white sauce, chicken Kiev, any of the shish-kebabs.