Kozak Ukrainian Eatery & Mill — Restaurant in Vancouver

This is a cozy cafe style diner where you order your food at the counter and it will be brought to your table. The location we visited was on Victoria Drive between 34th & 35th avenue, on the west side of Victoria Dr. We came for dinner around 6:45 pm. There was a dining area and there were lots of tables available (for 2 or 4 people). The awning is black and some of the lettering on the awning has faded so you might miss the building. The building is also a dark grey colour located in the middle of the block. Upon entering, there is a counter to order food and a menu on the counter. There are display cases with many different pastries. Shelves of breads are located behind the counter (different types of sourdough, rye) and along the right hand side of the room are refrigerators with variety of ready made take home items like cabbage rolls, borscht soup, perogies and other interesting items for sale.

We ordered two Mama's Combo, (price was $19.75 currently) (my choices were: pork cabbage roll, potato & dill and sausage (my friend had same except he chose seasonal mushrooms instead of sausage) and he added borscht soup to his order.

The borscht soup (there was only one size) came in a large bowl (can feed 2 persons) served on a wooden platter with 2 cloves of garlic and a pinch of salt. There are instructions that came with the soup to take the garlic and rub it in the salt, then nibble on it before taking spoonful of soup...repeat process. It tasted pretty good doing it that way. The garlic had a bit spiciness (kick) to it and tasted good with a little salt. The borscht soup was delicious and it came with a small container of sour cream which you are to add to the soup.

The sausage that came with my meal was also delicious, as were the perogies.

I was glad to see there were quite a lot of tables for 2 or 4 people. Prior to coming, I wasn't sure if there were tables or not and couldn't find any info on the website about dining in at this location so I thought it might be a just take out place, therefore, I was pleasantly surprised that there was a decent size dining area.

There is a water fountain type faucet in the dining area (just around the corner from the front counter) where you can help yourself to a glass of water.

Before leaving, my friend bought some of the premade cabbage rolls (there is a container of 12 small cabbage rolls) for $29.00 and a loaf of rye bread.

Parking: We didn't know there was a free parking lot behind the building so I would suggest you try that first (for 9 vehicles) Otherwise, you can try parking along Victoria Dr. but you may need to drive further up (south) of the restaurant or try the residential side streets.

I would come back again to try their Chicken Kiev, pastries or breakfasts.

It was an enjoyable meal and I would recommend you give this place a try. It was also very clean and...

We tried lunch at the New West location with some take outs and also Victoria Drive with Take out. As a general note the service was excellent and the quantity of the food was also adequate. Some reviews did indicate a poor service and insufficient quantity of food. We disagree with these review. We had a dine in experience in the New West location at their counter.We were pre-warned that no table existed and they reserved some seats accordingly. We had the Goulyash soup (we know about the Hungarian goulash as a main!) and it was good. And the soup was hot/warm enough for my taste (contrary to some previous comment). Our next choices were the Cabbage rolls and the Nalysnyky crêpes. The cabbage rolls were some of the best I have tasted but my knowledge dates back from the time I was living in Winnipeg. We chose the crêpes with chicken and mushroom. The filling was very nice. However the crêpes were too greasy. We bought some take out Nalysnykys from their Victoria place and they look much better and not greasy (we just warmed them up in an electrical oven and they were delicious...) For dessert we shared a Honey cake and a cottage cheese one. We liked the honey cake . We had a Russian made honey cake before and it was different, but our understanding is that there are few ways to make it. The dark chocolate on the cottage cheese cake should be removed or replaced as the dark chocolate overpower the taste of the cottage cheese cake. The day after we got a Rum Baba from the Victoria restaurant. These babas are huge. They come with a small circle of meringue with a raspberry on top. The taste was similar to a French baba au rum but the taste of the rum is very subtle. Not sure what type of rum was used, but usually the baba uses dark rum (BTW It was funny to see a native French pastry in an Ukrainian bakery!). We also tasted their Borsch as a take out. I understand that there are many variations of this soup but I would have liked to have potato in it to thicken it. The soup is too light (for me) but tasted good. Overall a very good experience other that the greasy crêpes (and this can be adjusted by telling them so when you order) and we will go back to a sit in at their Victoria location. Maybe in Gastown when we are...

This used to be my favorite place to eat. I used to drive from Downtown Vancouver to New West just for their cabbage rolls and perogies. Now i completely avoid the place even though it's a short walk from my house.

Over the last year they have been expanding fast and the quality and quantity of their food has gone way down. It's very sad to see.

Cabbage rolls are tiny now and less flavorful. The borscht was already expensive and they now give you less than half of what you used to get. Basically a thimble of soup. Perogies are hard to make, but $3/each is absurd. They also used to have an active point system, which was the only way i could justify shopping there regularly. That system has been mysteriously "on pause" for almost a year now. So much for all the money i spent to get points.

Most importantly, the staff seem stressed and are constantly changing, which is almost always a sign of bad management.

Staff used to laugh and have fun at Kozak, now they just seem overwhelmed and rarely stay for more then a few months.

Here's my old GOOD review to remember what Kozak used to be like:

Amazing food that is a bit steep in price for what it is. That said, I know the owners source high quality ingredients and I appreciate that the quality of the meals is very consistent.

THE GOOD: The bread is amazing. The cabbage rolls are awesome. The in-house Ukrainian breakfast is so so good and the perogies will melt in your mouth (the frozen perogies, however, are extremely expensive so I have stopped buying them). Both the meat and vegan borscht is absolutely delicious, although every few batches the meat is dry. The little salads that come with your meal are nice, although a bit small in portion. They do a GREAT job making coffee.

THE BAD: The potato pancakes are hit and miss and very expensive considering its just grated potato with some flower and an egg. You get 4 or 5, I can't remember, and when they're good they are very good but when they're bad you'll feel ripped off paying $15 for 4 dry over-cooked potato pancakes.

I had one bad meal (the lamb), which was very expensive so I wouldn't recommend that.

Overall, I couldn't recommend...