Shameless

They don’t make Stanley Tucci movies about Eastern European food. Guy Fieri ain’t housing halushki, getting bits of errant egg noodle all stuck all up in his bottled blonde flavor saver. Fermented veg and lard-studded shredded meats aren’t vibrant enough for the ‘gram. In other words, this cuisine ain’t cool, at least by the standards of media gatekeepers and influencers.

I get it.  I’m a first-generation Pole and a second-generation Slovakian. As a kid I was surrounded by duck blood infused soup, aka czarnina, and halubki, mucilaginous cabbage wrappers stuffed with greyish pink-tinged dry-rice studded mystery meat. 

My grandfather, a butcher by trade, made a kielbasa so garlicky, that even if you double wrapped it in Ziploc, its stinking perfume persisted. My mom would sneak it in the crisper drawer of the fridge. Dad would come home from work, open the door to the icebox, and he and the entire vampire contingent on True Blood would drop dead from the vapors. 

I was embarrassed by my culinary heritage and so committed to being a typical American kid, my mother didn’t even attempt to put any of this stuff in the lunchbox.

Instead of having the traditional immigrant child story of being made fun of in the school cafeteria, I was forced into an arguably darker place, carrying my insecurity in the form of secret shame.

Ironically, I’m a food writer because of my regular exposure to non-mainstream eats. I was never afraid to try anything because once you’ve slurped a little blood, what’s a little extra organ meat for dessert?

And so, by now I should be evolved, the equal opportunity food reporter promulgating the delicacies of my youth in my reporting.  But, that never happened. Sure, I’d rave about the brain masala at Shan Grocery or lose my mind over the beef cheek tacos from the Maxwell Market, but about the only dish from my childhood that got any column inches was pierogi.

That’s in part because carbs seem to transcend all cultures, and also because even right now I can feel my babcia’s gnarled hand guiding my tiny toddler fingers over a plastic yellow mug (no ring mold cutters were ever seen) teaching me how to cut the perfect dough round to stuff with cheddar and onion-infused mashed potato.  

Most days my grandmother was aloof, wracked with regret for being forced to leave her beloved homeland. She never learned English or assimilated in America. At some point the inertia of bitterness kept her so housebound, that, even though she loved me, she didn’t attend my wedding. No one would describe her as a joyful woman, but in these moments our jaws were sore from the taut smiles of our shared mirth making dumplings together.

If I was indifferent or ashamed of my culinary heritage, it was also, because save for Chicago’s Smak-Tak, I never saw Eastern European or Polish food through any other lens than steam table buffet mediocrity or poorly executed a la carte offerings in 99% of Chicago Polish restaurants. 

Smak-Tak executed well, but even then, they were very traditional and served the food inside some kind of hunter’s chalet that made me feel like I should have brought some cross-country skis, a mushroom foraging knife, and a St. Bernard to dinner.

Food doesn’t have to be modern or refined, but that neither of these things had ever really happened to Eastern European eats in Chicago (that I could see) in any meaningful way also reinforced the idea that what I grew up eating wasn’t worth much.

The denial was so bad that when I heard about the opening of Anelya in October, a restaurant focused on Ukrainian food, it didn’t quite make it to the top of my restaurants hit list.  Even the fact that it was being run by one of the most accomplished chef duos in the city, Beverly Kim and Johnny Clark, James Beard award and Michelin-star winners, didn’t move me.

Dear readers, I am a dumbass.

Now that I’ve experienced it, I now believe Anelya might be one of the best restaurants of the year.

This is also a lesson on the importance of community. I’d probably taken a year or more to get in the door, but a few of you sent me messages raving about the place. I listened. I’m glad I did.

Post-pandemic, Kim and Clark have doubled down on serving food that honors their own heritages, Korean at Parachute and Ukrainian at Anelya. While authenticity is a moving target, at both spots they have not dumbed anything down, nor have they particularly cheffed it up. Traditionalists visiting both spots will understand exactly what’s going on here.

Polish food and Slavic food is not Ukrainian food, but the countries share a border. The cuisines may have slight variances in spelling and certain seasonings, but the sausages, the dumplings and the ferments are very similar.

And so while I am not Ukrainian, I recognize what’s happening at Anelya. In a “tower” of appetizers a glittering silvery trio of tiered trays wheeled tableside and piled high with zakusky or little appetizers, I see the foil wrapper platters of pickles and the silvery tinsel-trimmed pine that my grandfather fell with an axe from his own suburban Michigan backyard from my own family Christmas gatherings. 

Kim and Clark have used their platform and Anelya to provide jobs to refugees who have fled their beloved war-ravaged country. While these folks are undoubtedly broken-hearted, seeing a celebratory presentation of plates so rooted in their homeland might provide a glimmer of hope, a foothold to begin the healing process.

In this moveable feast, I see the joy of roving cart dim sum. I also see the theatrical upsell of a Gibson’s waiter manhandling hunks of raw meat and lobster tails as big as a dolphin.

This presentation is an upsell opportunity for sure. How can I say no the server who has done all the work to get this cart filled with abundance into the tight corner by my table?

Still, I ain’t mad at it, because Anelya is not promoting commodity beef, but dishes you’ve never had. Our server knows most people don’t have a frame of reference for most of this stuff, so he knows he’s gotta explain things. He does so cheerfully with knowledge and enthusiasm, avoiding what could easily end up as pedantic raving.

At Anelya, this cart is overflowing with wasabi-spiked jewel orbs of trout roe nestled in floret-trimmed mini pastry flowing with velvety scallion cream cheese.

The cart is larded with a smoky carrot pashtet, a tiny croc of buttery carrot mash that’s completely vegetarian, but eats almost like delicate bbq pork pate when slathered on the crusty bark of sourdough-spiked Publican quality bread.

There’s also herring made from pristine raw Japanese fish fillet glistening with sunflower oil and crisp acidic tangles of onion.

There are creamy deviled egg half moons bursting with anise that finish with the salted funk of anchovy.

Once you devour these bright palate-fluffing snacks, you move on to the mains. If Stanley Tucci were to somehow embark on Big Night 2: Kyiv Nights, the part of the Timpano would undoubtedly now be played by Clark’s lokshyna, a bark of silky thousand layer pasta broiled to a delightful top crisp. The whole thing explodes with creamy farmer’s cheese and truffle funk. It’s like a lasagna and a mille-feuille had a baby.

Potato pancakes are stroopwafel thin, sharp at the edges like ninja throwing stars. Slathered with an umami-rich sweet sea buckthorn jam and crumbly feta, this is the ultimate in lacy fried potato technology.

The kovbasa sausage is pudding-like at the center, featuring a crunchy mahogany wrapper, and a lightness I can’t quite recall having in any encased meat ever other than maybe Publican’s boudin blanc. The dish is balanced with piquant sauerkraut and juicy currants.

Sturgeon meatballs bathing in honey tomato sauce makes me wonder if the traditional veal, beef and pork standard for meat orbs should be retired in favor of this juicy light fish-derived blend instead.

This dish pairs well with KIRÁLYUDVAR “PEZGŐ HENYE a sparkling Hungarian Tokaj whose residual sweetness holds up against the honey in the meatball sauce.  If you like it dry, the Heaps Good Wine, an oxidized “orange” pinot gris has a nice bit of steely minerality that would also work. Overshadowed by the Bourdeauxs and Napas and Mosels, Slovenia is one of the great wine regions of the world. Anelya’s list is full of beauties from the area that will finally make Chicagoans recognize this truth.

As comforting and as well executed as the food is, so is the room. There’s a nod to traditional old European industrial brutalism in grain-exposed woods, and the crumbling exposed cement walls in the bar. And yet, this is all softened by traditional decorative china mounted like art. There are also cool multi-color lamp fixtures in the main dining room that look a little like some kind of phosphorescent plant grouping from the planet Pandora of Avatar. Even the sound system at Anelya has an extraordinary warmth and clarity.

The after dinner shot list at Anelya will also keep you warm, though admittedly it may fuzz your clarity. You need the piana vishnya or sour cherry brandy especially as a pairing if the kitchen is offering the cherry chocolate cake special, a sort of Ukrainian riff on Black Forest, delicate, moist, and rife with cocoa.

My dziadzia’s homemade sour cherry hooch made from backyard cultivated fruit infused in 96% ABV Spirtyus grain alcohol tasted like Robitussin, but that Anelya’s smoother piana vishnya brought back memories of doing shots with the man, made it a sort of delicious time machine-like elixir.  

Nothing evoked my Polish childhood more though than lithe dough-wrapped potato-stuffed varenky dripping in saffron butter capped with tender ribbons of jowl bacon.  People have come close, Michael Symon with his beef cheek version, for example, to bettering my babcia’s dumplings, but nobody ever had. Youthful touchstones are usually impossible to eclipse if only because they’re so entrenched in your primitive brain chemistry and also because you’re probably so removed from that time that it’s easy to lie about something to yourself at a distance. 

I had enough of my grandmother’s pierogi though to know that I wasn’t deceiving myself about their excellence. It’s also how I’m confident that in his elegant execution, Clark finally accomplished the impossible, setting a standard for potato dumpling I am now certain, as I once was of my grandmother’s work, that can’t possibly be eclipsed.

Drinks and good restaurants sustain people They make you feel happy or joyous. They get you drunk or doped up on salt and sugar-fueled dopamine hits. But it’s very rare, especially when you’re from Eastern Europe, when a restaurant also make you feel good about who you are and where you come from, when a restaurant makes you proud to want to be who you always were but hid for so long, and that’s exactly what Anelya does for me.  But don’t worry, even if you’re Japanese, Hungarian, French, African, or even Italian like Mr. Fieri or Mr. Tucci, the thoughtful work of Kim and Clark is still guaranteed to take you down to Flavortown.

Anelya is located at 3472 N. Elston Ave. in Chicago