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Moldovan fare at Casa Mare
by John Marone, Kyiv Post Chief Editor
Jan 17 2007, 20:53


Restaurant Casa Mare serves tasty Moldovan fare in a cosy authentic interior.  
If you want to get a taste of authentic Moldovan hospitality in Kyiv, you don’t have to hop on a train to Chisinau. Casa Mare, located in the Ukrainian capital’s freshly built-up Obolon district, offers the real thing at realistic prices. Casa Mare means “hospitality house” in Romanian and pretty much lives up to its name.

In keeping with Kyiv Post tradition, I was expected to bring a date, so  I chose to invite the “invisible woman,” which guaranteed a conversation of my choosing, the freedom to eat like a pig and – as a secondary consideration – a smaller tab for the newspaper to pick up.

Casa Mare is a five minute walk with a pensioner from Minsk metro station. While Obolon may seem like peripheral right-bank Kyiv on the map, it beats Khreshchatyk for pedestrian pleasure. The whole area has been built up in the last few years, especially the little brick-paved square where Casa Mare sits.

The square also features what promises to be another beautiful Orthodox church under construction and a couple of nice, if already heavily graffiti-ed pavilions. The overall impression is Central Europe with a southern touch – the perfect setting for a Moldovan tavern. My date was clearly impressed.

The tavern feeling continued as we entered the low built Casa Mare, with its whitewashed walls and bare tile floors. Oak and vine were everywhere – on the archways, window panes and the carved dividers that add a bit of privacy between tables. There are smoking and non-smoking sections, separated by enough corridor space to keep the smell of tobacco from wafting in between.

The guy behind the bar, Alexander, told me that they open a terrace and put tables on the square when it gets warm. Swarthy and dressed in the traditional, embroidered Moldovan shirt – the same thing you see on Ukrainians, except with more vines in the embroidery – Alexander told me the owner and chef are ethnic Moldovans, as are many of their customers. Casa Mare, he boasted, is the only Moldovan restaurant in Kyiv. Then with cheesy decorum, he gave me a peak at “the lovers’ room,” a little nook with a window view.

Unlike the other two main dining rooms, whose tables fit four, “the lovers’ room” only seats two. Shamelessly dressed in a see-through outfit, the invisible woman had clearly caught the eye of Alexander, who went on to tell us how they had staged a Moldovan wine and music festival in mid-September. The restaurant is flanked by a Moldovan wine shop. Whether you’re keen on Bessarabia or not, you can’t help noticing the oil paintings with Moldovan motifs hanging under soft tavern lights or the hand-sewn carpets in the non-smoking room. There is also a banquet hall.

The only thing that takes away the ambience is a TV screen in the smoking room, but they had it turned down so that we could hear some Romanian ballads. And don’t get uptight over the starched white napkins and candles. The upholstered wooden chairs are not stiff and bumpy but just what your bottom needs. And the plates are spotless ceramic.

The menu items are in Russian and Romanian, but so are the prices. You can get a bottle of Moldovan Cognac, five-year-old Sterkh, for $13.

On the other hand, they offer some 40-year-old stuff called President’s Cognac for $900. The invisible woman can’t hold her booze, so I just ordered a 100 ml glass of “Porkur Negru De” for around $2. It passed the criteria of my primitive palette in that it wasn’t sugary or tin-tasting. The most expensive stuff on the wine list, which included imports, didn’t exceed $40 a bottle.

The food was also reasonably priced. I ordered the Chisinau salad (eggs, black olives, reasonably fresh cucumbers, bell peppers and tomatoes served on sheets of dark Romaine lettuce and topped with sour cream and the ubiquitous nearly-grated goat cheese). It was worth the $3.

Then I got the “Chorba,” a bean-based soup with plenty of pork and the usual collection of carrots, onion, etc. It went for $6 but I wasn’t complaining.

For the main course, I ordered so-called “Sermelutze.” Served up hot in a salad bowl under cool sour cream, “Sermelutze” are something between stuffed grape leaves and Ukrainian golubsti. At first glance, they look like Brussel sprouts filled with pork and a rice that more resembles millet. I loved every morsel. If not for the transparent look of disapproval from my date, I would have licked the bowl. The cost – less than $8.

Next there was the “Mamaliga” – a Moldovan must. It’s really just cornmeal, but they prepare it to a light and golden perfection, adding the mandatory goat cheese and shkvarki (dried salo chips). It was less than $3. For dessert I got a dish of lightly baked apples covered in chocolate and whipped cream that were so beautifully displayed on the sugar-dusted plate that I felt ashamed for destroying this work of art with my crude cutlery. This cost me only around $5.

Throughout my gastronomic experience, the dining area was warm and cozy.

The waitress neither hovered over the table nor went AWOL. True, she did snatch my salad plate away before I had shoved that last tomato slice in my trap, but even that was done with discretion.

Casa Mare (24 Heroyiv Stalinhradu, section 11A, 537-6506). Open daily 10 a.m. till the last customer

English menu: No

English-speaking staff: Yes

Average meal: $30