Consolidated Ukrainian Drinking Post

Kathleen said...

my friend went to a Ukraine restaurant in LA and the waiter served him "the national drink of Ukraine". it was a tumbler of warm vodka with a pickle floating in it.

Well then. I did not encounter the pickle. That was a very satisfying sentence to write.

All serious drinking I encountered, though, involved vodka and vodka only. Everything else was for ladies or the otherwise effeminate (me).

Below is the new bar at the hotel on the town square in Chortkiv. Note the variety of samey bottles to the left. That was the shit. Although it's ominous that some is flavoured, the straight stuff is scarily drinkable in a way that I have never encountered before. There's probably better somewhere, but the owner of the place seemed like the kind of thug who knew the deal.



Below is the dreaded Balzam, uh, Prikarpatskiya? Someone sensible may correct me if they know Cyrillic or what this poison is. It's a mix of a bunch of different plants, pours like oil, tastes like meticulously cursed petroleum and raisin. Not intolerable, as I drink for largely functional purposes, but I was explicitly warned not to get drunk using it. Found in the vicinity of Ivano-Frankivsk and nowhere else, or so I'm told.



Below is kvas, a sort of wheat soda pop. Somehow also raisiny, it's odd and sweet. Whatever actual homemade kvas is I did not find out. This bottle's fulla all sorts of chemicals like our own fizzier items.



As well as the food we have more kvas and Yoppi, a cherry cola. Yum. Someone was trying to say it was not cola and some kinda unique delicacy but cola is written on the bottle...possibly as some sort of totemic word vaulting Yoppi into the pantheon of glorious colas worldwide.



Below, and not tasted, are hidden treasures put away for future occasions by the hosts of the fine feast above.



Crazy juice. Disgustingly sweet and not quite as crazy as hoped.



10:30am, time to drink at the highest point in Lviv. The sharp-eyed may be able to discern that the morning vodka is the brand mentioned above. The locals don't seem especially happy about their choice, but they're Ukrainian and so must be cut some slack.



Hike's bad, like every Ukrainian beer I tried...maybe I'm being unfair because I'm not actually positive where Hike's from. Beer mix is apparently not as bad as the beer alone.



From a prior post, these are shit. The two on the outside brag that they are made with or by Nemiroff vodka but alas that has no sugar-cancelling properties.



I consumed various other things. Alas, I cannot remember them.