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Cafe Kiev - CLOSED
Rating Details »
Category: Restaurants [Edit]
Neighborhood: East Village117 2nd Avenue
(between 6th St & 7th St)
New York, NY 10003
(212) 420-9600
- Nearest Transit:
-
Astor Place (6)
8th St-Broadway (R, W)
2nd Ave-Houston St (F, V)
8 reviews for Cafe Kiev
This place was a seedy Ukranian diner for a long, long time. It never got updated; it never got a new menu; I'm pretty sure it never even got cleaned. It was mentioned in that Detatchable Penis song, and Allen Ginsberg used to cruise for boys there. The food was crap, but decent, but cheap. And that alone kept me going there.
Then they closed. They got bought? Maybe not, but they changed names. They did some remodeling, but it was the same menu, the same food, the same prices. Probably the same grease in the deep-fat fryers. And that worked for a bit.
But then the place took a hard left, and tried to become some kind of trendy Eurotrash hipster hangout. The first time I walked in, I thought "looks like the owner's nephew just graduated from cooking school..."
The food was about the same, but the prices were higher, and the whole thing was just... weird. Plus they had 37 different flavors of infused vodka, and that tends to draw the crowd that likes to frequent places with 37 different flavors of infused vodka, which is never good. (Unless you sell vodka and mark it way the hell up.)
Guess what? They went out of business. Whoda thunk it.
I think the moral of the story is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it." I mean, I would take the train all the way from Astoria in the middle of a blizzard just for a piece of their kielbasa and a couple of pierogies. After the change, I'd rather walk west a few blocks and stop in the McDonald's. What a shame this landmark was left to die.
Um...this place used to be fantastic. Loved going here for a nice hearty bowl of chicken soup (real ethnic dish-I know!) on a cold blistering day.
Now I rather poke my eye out with a toothpick. They ruined this place.
My friend and I ended up here because we were so tired of going to Virage at the end of my street all the time and we loved the food so much we went back and found that they weren't serving food on that night.
My friend had a chicken sandwhich of some sort and I had the piroghies and the owner gave us a free dessert--chocolate blintz--which was simply amazing!
The sandwhich was good too, but the piroghies stood out. Polonia is cheap, Kiev is yummy (and still pretty cheap).
The sangria pitcher that we got was good as well although it was somewhat small.
As the area becomes increasingly gentrified, old-time neighborhood haunts are undergoing makeovers to keep up with the changing times. The updated Kiev - much like the current Joan Rivers when compared to her appearance on the old Ed Sullivan show - looks nothing like its former self. However, just as Joan's caustic wit remains beneath her multi-lifted facade, so does the hearty, stick-to-your-ribs Eastern European fare - albeit in noticeably smaller portions - continue to please the regulars here midst the gleaming surroundings that are more Chelsea than East Village. What really matters is the food . . . rich chicken soup, pierogies, potato pancakes, kielbasa, stuffed cabbage, borscht, and the like, all of which will keep you warm on brutally cold winter nights.
Rest in peace Cafe Kiev....thanks for the memories~
Right now, it's a smoking hole with nothing there. Perhaps a new diner will rise like a Phoenix from the Flames and make cheap eggs and bacon breakfasts all day. We can dream!
Where else to you find good cheap Russian or diner food this late at night? An East Village staple, surly , but fast and efficient surface. Good place for comfort food after a night of partying.
It's not perfect, but it was the quintessential downtown cafe experience and cheap enough for a student kind of home base for an entire generation of art school grads who had moved to the Big City. The daily soups with two buttered slices of challah bread kept so many of us alive for so long. And the kasha with mushroom gravy! sigh.
