Pervak — Restaurant in Kyiv

What impressed:

Food: an extensive choice of traditional Ukrainian dishes including hot and cold starters, delectable main courses, and tempting puddings. Old favourites are present: borscht, varenyky (dumplings with savoury or sweet fillings - look out for delicious seasonal strawberry or cherry options), pickled herring, plentiful potato and meat courses. Good choice of alcoholic beverages and soft drinks. Most importantly, food is tasty and expertly prepared.

Decor: Ukrainian theme throughout. There are several interconnecting dining rooms and an outdoor seating area, all featuring elements of Ukrainian history, culture and tradition. Staff uniform comprises of colourful national costumes.

Atmosphere: relaxed, informal, friendly. As with all popular eateries, can become a little noisy in the evening when at full capacity.

What did not impress: Customer service: variable. Although staff are courteous and helpful in most cases, some waiters were arguing with each other and swearing within an earshot of customers. When staff numbers are low, waiting for dishes and the bill can be longer than 15 minutes.

During one of my visits while enjoying a plate of varenyky I discovered a chip of broken plate in my dish and alerted the waitress. Surprisingly her response was: would you like a discount on your bill? Well, no, I would like an apology and assurance that measures will be taken to ensure that customers do not end up with pieces of broken glass in their mouths in the future. The incident was simply ignored without an apology from anyone (or a discount). Further staff training to deal with such situations would be useful, although most of the time waiters and waitresses are friendly and welcoming and...

Complete disaster, almost to a criminal degree. The waiter, who at first glance made a friendly impression, suggested plates of diverse foods. While it took very long to get food and drinks and getting everything on the table, the big surprise came in the end: THE BILL! No matter how low your accounting standards are..., getting a piece of paper with an arbitrarily figure written on is simply unacceptable. After some disagreement with the waiter, we wanted to pay with credit card. The option was denied with the excuse, that there are some troubles with the credit card machines as their provider is running a systems update(!) Wow! Stunning! After another disagreement, we were told, it takes some twenty minutes until the "credit card system" is online again, which to their surprise we decided to wait out. After half an hour, that "credit card machine" miraculously worked again, and we were presented with a receipt in Cyrillic only. Stupid tourists can't read it anyway, right? Well: most us of had Russian in their curriculum in school, so it was also clear we were being ripped of. Sick of the argument we paid... Food? Drinks? Who cares... - i strongly advise to...

I went to this place yesterday with my wife , although I thought the place to be pleasant looking but the food was mediocre at best but what really was most annoying to me was that creepy waiter who was annoyingly hovering around and rushing us to place the order; he asked for the order three times in less than fifteen minutes ! Their menu is a booklet like and very confusing , I needed time to familiarize myself with it . I wanted to order ribeye steak but when I asked the waiter if the portion was only 100 grams he replied that the steak would be served in 500 grams which was way too much meat for me , I simply can not eat half a kilo of meat let alone the price I would have paid which would have been in line if not more than at a high end steakhouse in the US . Worst , after we paid as we usually do with a credit card , that waiter just stood so close to us eying us in a very creepy way maybe to see how much cash tip we were going to leave , not good! It was not an enjoyable experience to say the least . This place will be last on my list to visit with all the other available better options in the city of Kyiv .Bad...