A Journey Down the Borscht River

A chef at Veselka, 2022. Photo: Dina Litovsky In keeping with family tradition, I was broke when I moved to New York in 2003. I wasn’t immigrant poor like my mother’s family was when they arrived in the 1900s, after escaping the czar, or like my father and his parents were when they landed a few decades later, after fleeing the Nazis. I had no money because I was 23 years old and all I wanted was to be a writer.

Welcome to the Ukrainian Festival, 1978. Painting by Yaroslava Surmach Mills. Illustration: Reverse painting on cellulose acetate. Rights and reproduction © Nik Mills. Courtesy of the Ukrainian Museum. Courtesy of the Surmach Family.

A group of six sits down next to me and orders. The way I hear one man at the table ask for borscht — a smoother variation on the word, with a little romance added to it — reminds me of my grandfather, who spoke an accented Yiddish, influenced by Ukrainians and Romanians, that I’ve heard referred to as Ukrainish. He was born in Chernivtsi, only he knew it as Czernowitz, when the city was still part of the then-crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Before I pay the bill, I order a mixed plate of pierogi, eat one, and ask for the rest to go to bring home to my wife. Outside, I see that the line for Veselka is still wrapped around the corner, so I walk across the street to B&H and order the whitefish melt. B&H represents a classic example of New York City’s blurring of influences: Before it was Little Ukraine, Second Avenue was a destination for Jewish immigrants, and businesses like B&H were aimed at that clientele.

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