Dining at Shynok Restaurant like eating at Baba’s house
A darling little restaurant opened last fall in a modest brick home on Broad Street. Located just opposite Shopper’s Drug Mart, between 14th and 15th avenues, it’s one of those blink-and-you’ll-miss-it, tucked-away places.
Shynok was opened in September 2014 by Inna Zapisotska, a fabulous Ukrainian cook who moved to Regina from Kiev seven years ago.
While she worked as an economist in Ukraine, her dream was to open a restaurant. When she moved to the Queen City, she held various jobs for the first few years, including a position as a baker at Robin’s Donuts and decorating ice cream cakes at Dairy Queen. All the while, she kept her dream alive to one day serve the recipes she grew up eating and served in her own home.
“We wanted to show off Ukrainian food,” says her daughter, Anna Zapisotska.
Inna explains in a thick Ukrainian accent that all the recipes originated in the kitchens of her mother, grandmother and greatgrandmother.
For Anna, every mouthful is a taste of home.
“We serve the same borscht that my great-grandma made,” she says with a smile.
Shynok means a small tavern or restaurant in Ukrainian, Inna explains.
She has decorated both floors of the brick home like an old Ukrainian dodomu (home), with tables decked in stitched red, white and black tablecloths, lots of colourful flowers, traditional Ukrainian embroidered fabrics, pottery and mason jars of canned vegetables. The whole effect creates a very warm and inviting atmosphere. Indeed, it feels like dining at Baba’s house.
And just like in Baba’s kitchen, order a coffee and you’ll be served one of Inna’s warm sweet buns dusted with powdered sugar and oozing with a cherry, strawberry or raspberry jam.
My partner and I started with a wonderful bowl of hot borscht. It came with beautifully featherlight garlic-dill buns called pampushki, the tops brushed while warm with raw minced garlic.
Made of course from Baba’s recipe, the mixture was much thicker and heartier than most I’ve had in the past. It had a consistency of tomato sauce, yet was not at all heavy. Each portion was served in a soup crock brimming with a natural sweetness of shredded beets and tomato paste, pieces of carrot, onions and fresh dill.
Dig down and you’ ll scoop up generous shreds of chicken. Together with grandma’s buns and a dollop of fresh sour cream you will have the perfect light lunch ($7/$9.25).
For something more substantial, Inna serves a weekday lunch special ($14.75) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. There are three options, all of which include borscht and those fabulous garlic-dill buns. The options are cabbage rolls and a side salad, or a plate of perogies with caramelized onions and sour cream, or meatballs with mashed potatoes or buckwheat. For a Saskatchewan appetite, this meal will fit the bill very well.
The holubtsi cabbage rolls ($9.25) are wrapped with sour cabbage and have a nice ratio of cabbage to ground pork and beef filling and tomato sauce. Shaped like a tricorne hat, Inna says that she follows her mother’s recipe, which is finicky and a lot more work than her grandmother’s rolled versions. We scarfed down ours with a pink side salad of cooked diced beets, potatoes, fresh onions and mayonnaise.
“It’s a modified version of my grandma’s,” explains Anna. “My grandma made it with oil, but I didn’t like it that way, so she always made mine with mayonnaise.”
The perogies (vareniki) ($8.25) are traditional and not at all doughy. Inna makes them from scratch daily, filling and hand pinching the savoury pastries with meat (m’yasni) or cabbage (kapystni) or potato and cheese (kartoplyani). She boils each batch to order and garnishes them with caramelized onions and the requisite side of sour cream.
The menu is quite diverse and includes about 25 items from appetizers like a platter of pickled vegetables ($5.75) — with tomatoes, sauerkraut, openky honey mushrooms, and crunchy garlic cloves — to meatballs (kotleta po selyanski), pork sausage (khortychanka) and savory and sweet crepes (mlinci) ($6.50). There is also a small selection of homey desserts.
For a change of pace, try yzvar ($3) instead of water or pop. It’s a traditional Ukrainian juice made of dried plums and apples and will keep your digestion working quite nicely.
The meals at Shynok are almost as enjoyable as eating around grandma’s table, unless of course, you bring Baba with you. The cooking is not pretentious. It’s honest, simple, elegant and very well prepared. In a province where so many Ukrainians have put down their Canadian roots, Shynok is a welcome addition to the Regina food scene. Dobre apetytu (good appetite)!