LAURA: As they say in the Ukraine, “[Unpronounceable word]!”, which means “Welcome, please sit down and stuff your face!” And that is exactly what we did at the Ukrainian East Village Restaurant. Watch our video to see us chow ‘n chat about borscht, varenyky and studenetz, a pork-filled gelatin that would make even Bill Cosby sing, “J-E-L-L-Oh, hell no!” But first, allow us to drop a bit of Ukrainian knowledge on you.

ADAM: Extending an internationally upraised middle finger to Dr. Atkins, Ukrainians eat bread with every meal. Thus our food was prefaced with some amazing, freshly baked challah and rye. The Ukraine has long been known as the Breadbasket of Europe because their farmlands pop up so much grain it’s like God secretly replaced their usual soil with a country-sized mat of Miracle Grow. Despite being smaller than the state of Texas, the Ukraine formerly churned out 25 percent of the Soviet Union’s entire agricultural output. Their fields are so legendary that Hitler had a plan to eliminate the country’s entire population so he could repopulate the farmlands with Germans. (This might lead one to believe that perhaps Hitler wasn’t a very nice man. Or perhaps he just loved bread.)

LAURA: Speaking of grain-greedy men with bad mustaches, Joesph Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture in the 1930s caused the worst man-made famine in history, resulting in 10 million Ukrainian deaths and a lot of hangry* people. So no wonder the Ukes go gangbusters on bread today—they EARNED that carb bloat. If you wanna feel extra guilty about going back for thirds at Old Country Buffet, check out the Harvard Interview Refugee Project. Type “Ukraine” and “famine” into the search bar to read heart-wrenching stories of starvation, including at least one account of cannibalism that somehow made our meat jello seem not so bad:

“I was at a bazaar called the Besarabian market. I saw a woman open a valise and put her goods out for sale. Her goods consisted of jellied meat, which she sold at 50 rubles a portion. I saw a man come over to her — a man who bore all the marks of starvation — he bought himself a portion and began eating. As he ate of his portion, he noticed that a human finger was embedded in the jelly. He began shouting at the woman and began yelling at the top of his voice. People came running, gathered around her, and then seeing what her food consisted of, took her to the police. At the militia, two members of the NKVD went over to her and, instead of taking action against her, they burst out laughing. ‘What, what you killed a kulak [a wealthy peasant]? Good for you!’ And then they let her go.’”

ADAM: The most amazing thing I learned about the Ukraine was this: My grandmother was actually born there. I didn’t learn that until I was talking to my dad after our meal. As I was growing up, my grandma used to say simply that she was from Russia—which was the case back then because the Ukraine was part of the USSR—but it turns out she was specifically from Dnipropetrovsk, the Ukraine’s third largest city. She snuck out to the US with her mother after the Russian Revolution. The revelation makes me feel like a complete ass. Here we are on a quest to learn about the countries of the world from strangers in New York, and I never took the time to learn about my own grandmother’s homeland directly from her while she was still alive. So I’d like to put out this request: Dear Internet, If anyone out there happens to be from the area around Dnipropetrovsk, and you wouldn’t mind taking some time to tell me more about it, please reblog or get in touch at navigeaters@gmail.com. As a thanks, I promise to send you some bread.

* When you’re so hungry, you’re angry.

Eats Deets
Ukrainian East Village Restaurant
140 Second Ave. (East Village)
(212) 529-5024

ADAM: Malaysia wants you to know that its food is awesome. To that end, their government has recently launched a publicity campaign aimed at getting New Yorkers to think of going out for Malaysian just like they would think of going out for Chinese or Indian or Thai or whatever nationality it is they claim to be at P.F. Chang’s. So in a Navigeatin’ first, a country actually offered to take us out to dinner. We agreed to let Malaysia pay for the date, but swore there would be no untoward hanky panky, because we are ladies.

LAURA: Speak for yourself, Winer. I totally banged Malaysia. And it all went down at Laut, where we were mentored by professional wino Michael Green and had plate after plate piled upon us by chef and owner Kathy Wong. She explained that Malaysian cuisine is a multicultural mishmash of native Malay dishes with Chinese, Indian, Thai and even some Portuguese and Middle Eastern influences. That’s what happens when your nation is right on the Eastern Spice Trade Route and everyone wants a piece of the hot property.

ADAM: Our first dish, Roti Canai, showed how Malaysia got its Indian on. This flatbread is lighter, daintier and, dare I say, awesomer then the roti you’d eat in India. Kathy actually took us into the kitchen so we could watch her chef use four flicks of his wrists to flip a lump of dough into tissue paper thinness. (Progression of pics here, here, here and here.) The dough is then grilled and served with a curry sauce, the bite of which is nicely tempered with sweet coconut milk.

LAURA: We also got a taste of red snapper seasoned with belacan, a signature Malay ingredient made of fermented ground shrimp that’s been salt-cured, sun-dried and formed into a block of paste. Although uncooked belacan looks like a bar of chocolate, it smells like a post-game jock strap and is meant to be used sparingly. Cooking it kills the stench and the bacteria (raw paste is not meant for consumption), and just a dab adds a lot of texture and taste.

ADAM: Most Malaysian meals include some sort of Nasi, aka rice. The fish came with Nasi Lemak, which is rice that’s soaked in coconut milk before being steamed. Nasi Lemak is sweet and delicious and often eaten for breakfast. In contrast, our next plate featured a scoop of Nasi Goreng, fried rice that’s complexly spiced. It came paired with some wonderfully soft calamari alongside another one of Malaysia’s signature curry dishes, Beef Rendang (whole plate pictured below). Kathy told us it took her about two hours to prepare Beef Rendang because of all the spicing and cooking it required. Meanwhile, it only took us about 30 seconds to eat it. (We win!)

LAURA: We finished off our meal with black sticky rice and a tea-pulling ceremony, in which a showboat mixes tea with condensed milk and pours it in ridiculously long streams from one pitcher to another. Imagine Tom Cruise’s character in Cocktail without the booze (or suicide or Gina Gershon). Teh tarik, as it’s called, is so popular in Malaysia, they even do it in fast-food joints and hold competitions. 

ADAM: Yeah, watching that tea-pulling had me giddy. Thanks for a great date, Malaysia! We’d have slipped your whole country some tongue at the end, but after all that eating, our mouths were tired.

Eats Deets
Laut
15 East 17th Street (Flatiron)
(212) 206-8989

ADAM: For this post on Hungarian food, I’m just going to cut straight to the Cabbage Strudel. We had it, and it was amazing. In fact, we partially chose our restaurant—Andre’s Cafe in the part of Manhattan’s Upper East Side formerly known as Little Hungary—because of a New York Times article penned by Nora Ephron, in which she chronicles her obsession with Cabbage Strudel and how Andre’s was the only restaurant where she was able to find it made correctly/awesomely.

LAURA: I was doubtful of Ephron’s claims—1100 words gushing about a pastry-wrapped vegetable that I associate with stimulating bowel movements—but she was as spot-on about the strudel as she was about Deep Throat’s identity. When it came out, our noses sensed “eggroll,” but our mouths thought otherwise. It was unexpectedly sweet and so rich with butter, each bite was like getting assaulted by a milkmaid. I was convinced the cabbage was loaded with nutmeg or cinnamon or some other saccharine ingredient, but our server said that salt and peppering were the only seasonings.

ADAM: Next came the soups—specifically a cauliflower and a beef goulash—because we’d read soup was a hearty staple of traditional Hungarian lunches, which is their biggest meal of the day. Unfortunately, the soups we got were fairly thin and generally tasteless. Let’s pretend they never happened and move on to our entrees.

LAURA: I stayed on the roughage train and ordered the stuffed cabbage, which was more savory than the strudel but just as delicious. A mixture of pork and rice was crammed into a pocket of cabbage leaves and then smothered with sauerkraut and served with a side sour cream. It was reminiscent of a bratwurst without the bun, so if this were 1997, Dr. Atkins would be shoving it into your fat face.

ADAM: I had a hearty and tasty Chicken Paprikas with Nokedli, which is essentially a paprika-seasoned stewed chicken served with a lump of spatzle. Paprikas are staple Hungarian dishes, made by cooking meat with fat, onions, paprika and sour cream. And let’s note: The spice paprika isn’t always hot, it can also be sweet, as it was here. These days, paprika is thought of as the Hungary’s signature spice, but it actually wasn’t around till the 16th century when the Turks brought it to over, along with coffee and the aforementioned stuffed cabbage. Unfortunately, the Turks also brought over their army and used it to occupy Hungary for 150 years. So, you know…trade-offs.

LAURA: Dessert was the Dobos Torte (below), a layered vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream filling. What sets it apart from the Betty Crocker variety is a hardened caramel top, the invention of József Dobos, torte creator and the Hungarian Idol of confections during the late 1800s. The caramel topping kept the cake from drying out and put Dobos on the map for creating a longer-lasting pastry. Then Twinkies were invented, proved their shelf-life of 64 years or whatever, and everyone forgot about Dobos.

ADAM: We also fought over two tasty Palatschinkes, aka Hungarian crepes, one of which was filled with chocolate and one with raisins and cheese. Palatschinkes can also be filled with savories and served as a main dish. For example, my Chicken Paprikas can also be ordered wrapped in a crepe. I’m dubbing that dish Sauced Chicks in a Blanket.

LAURA: Overall, the meal was amazing. It certainly left me Hungary for more!

ADAM: Yeah, I’d ask you to keep going back there, but I don’t want to be a Budapest!

LAURA: What do you call an Eastern European with a big penis? Ready: A Hung-Aryan!

ADAM: Babe, that has nothing to do with our meal. But…high-five!

Eats Deets
Andre’s Café
1631 2nd Avenue, Upper East Side
(212) 327-1105

LAURA: Reindeer blood pancakes will have to wait until our next gastro-journey to Finland, because we couldn’t find anyplace in New York that would give Rudolph a phlebotomy. So instead we went on the hunt for the Runeberg tart, a pastry named after Finnish poet Johan Ludvig Runeberg that’s only available in Finland from the beginning of January to February 5, Runeberg’s birthday. My mom’s response to its seasonality? “So it’s like the eggnog shake at McDonald’s?” Yes, mom/America, the Runeberg tart is the McDonald’s eggnog shake of Finland.

ADAM: I’m sorry, but can we backtrack for a moment? To blood pancakes? To elaborate: Blood pancakes are made with blood instead of milk. They’re eaten with grilled onions. We went for the Runenberg tart, BUT WE’LL BE BACK FOR YOU LATER, BLOOD PANCAKES!

LAURA: Even finding the tart wasn’t easy. There are a handful of Scandinavian restaurants scattered around NYC, but Finn-specific cuisine is mostly non-existent. So I popped by the Finnish Lutheran Church in the West Village to see if someone could help our quest, and a sweet woman named Heli answered our pastry prayers. First she told us a bit about the man behind the muffin: Johan Runeberg was not just a poet, but a sort of patriotic cheerleader who raised the Finns’ spirits during a national identity crisis in the mid-1800s. Sweden ruled the nation for half a century, and then Russia swooped in and made Finland part of its empire, leaving Finns to wonder, “Who the heck are we?” Runeberg got all Dr. Phil on their ass, wrote Finland’s national anthem, and helped create what Heli referred to as “Finnomania.”

ADAM: Essentially, Runeberg was the Hulk Hogan of his day.

LAURA: Right, but with fewer ripped shirts. Heli went on to explain: “Runeberg gave Finns self-esteem. He said, ‘We’re not Swedes, we’re not Russians. Let’s be Finns!’” Which is why the Finns celebrate Runeberg’s birthday every year with his favorite tart, one that he ate every morning with “punsch,” a Nordic cocktail. No wonder he loved Finland so much.

ADAM: The church’s office manager Liisa was baking the tarts to serve after their next mass, and they very kindly invited us to stop by. Which is how I ended up sitting in church at 3 pm on Super Bowl Sunday, listening to a mass given entirely in Finnish.

LAURA: After the service, we had the tarts, which don’t bear much resemblance to traditional tarts. They have the body of a topless muffin, the texture of rye bread, and the taste of an almond-flavored gingersnap. There’s a bit of raspberry jam dolloped on top, but that only made it through one or two bites, so you were left with just the cake-y part, a similar feeling to getting halfway through a bowl of Cap’n Crunch Berries and seeing only the yellow nuggets left. You still eat it, though, because it’s Cap’n freaking Crunch.

ADAM: The best part was we ate the tarts while listening to our second all-Finnish speech of the afternoon, this one amazingly given by the woman who recorded the Finnish language tape for Berlitz. I have no idea what she was saying, but I really enjoyed listening to the Finnish language. It’s a great soundtrack for tart-eating.

The Runeberg Tart is in hibernation until next year, but the church sells other delicious Finnish goodies during their annual Christmas Bazaar, so we highly suggest stopping by. You could also go if you like Jesus or the sound of Scandinavian languages.

Eats Deets:
Finnish Lutheran Church
81 Christopher Street, West Village
(646) 638-4195