dresese

Uncle Vanya

I have a bit of a backlog of food posts to make. While I have some free time, here's some info on a lunch I had a few weeks ago at Uncle Vanya in Midtown.

I went there with two of my good lunch-partnering coworkers. The style was individual dishes, so I can only vouch for the dish I got, which was the stuffed cabbage. Which was excellent. We also got a chicken in aspic (not pictured) which was good, but when you added the grated horseradish, it became really good. Oh, and there was nice dark rye bread served as well.

All in all, a nice change of pace for lunch. I'm no Russian food expert, but one of my co-workers is semi-Russian and thought it was good, but not truly great. But realize that this shouldn't give you pause; it is my experience that any countries ex-pats will never enjoy restaurants of their own cuisine. My Persian friend Farhang would often claim that there are no decent Persian restaurants in the Bay Area, which I always found odd seeing how there are so darn many of them. I mean, no good ones at all? But to him, his wife or mother's cooking is far superior to what you get in the restaurant. But for the rest of us who can't just invite themselves over to Farhang's house, the best we can do is a restaurant. So, in that vein, unless you can go eat at your Russian friend's house, go to Uncle Vanya and you will be happy.