Veselka is a Ukrainian 24-hour restaurant in New York City’s East Village. It was established in 1954 by Wolodymyr Darmochwal and his wife, Olha Darmochwal, post–World War II Ukrainian refugees. Veselka is one of the last of many Slavic restaurants that once proliferated the neighborhood. A cookbook, published in October 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, highlights more than 120 of the restaurant’s Eastern European recipes. A sister restaurant, Veselka Bowery, on East 1st Street and Bowery, opened in November 2011. It closed in 2013.
History
In 1954, the Darmochwals purchased a candy shop and newsstand at Second Avenue and East 9th Street in New York City in an effort to help the Ukrainian Youth Association purchase the building that housed its headquarters. Wolodymyr Darmochwal gave this venture the moniker ‘’Veselka’’ – the Ukrainian word for rainbow. In 1960, Darmochwal combined the candy store and newsstand with an adjacent luncheonette. In the following years, as the East Village became known as the Haight-Ashbury of the east coast, Veselka became a social center for a cross-section of the community that included old-world tradition and new-world counterculture. By the time that New York City’s economic crisis hit in the 1970s, Veselka was a fixture in the neighborhood. It was able to expand during the economic recovery of the 1980s, at which time the row of phone booths at the rear of the restaurant came to be used as informal office space for East Village performance artists. The 1980s, Veselka began receiving reviews and awards that spread its reputation beyond its immediate neighborhood. That reputation was further cemented when the restaurant was used as a location for the films Trust the Man, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, Trainwreck, Ocean's 8 and Billions and memorialized in the songs "Veselka Diner" by Doctor Rokit and “Veselka” by Greta Gertler, which was National Public Radio’s “Song of the Day” on January 24, 2008. Veselka is also featured in City ofFallen Angels, the fourth book in Cassandra Clare'sThe Mortal Instruments series. Anthony Bourdain filmed an interview with publicist Danny Fields at Veselka that appeared in the final episode of on CNN in 2018. Veselka produces 3,000 pierogis by hand every day and uses 500 pounds of beets to make 5,000 gallons of borscht every week. The restaurant has attracted notable patrons including musician Ryan Adams, artist Sally Davies, director Bart Freundlich, performance artistPenny Arcade, comedian Jon Stewart and actors Julianne Moore, Chris Noth, Parker Posey, Justin Long and Debra Messing. Veselka remains a family-run business: it is currently owned by Darmochwal's son-in-law, Tom Birchard, who began working at Veselka in 1967, and run by the founder’s grandson, Jason Birchard. The founders' son, Mykola Darmochwal, maintains a role as consultant. Veselka continues to support the needs of neighborhood residents and Eastern European immigrants: in 1994, its kitchen staff included four doctors, three from Ukraine and one from Poland, who had recently arrived in the United States.
Reviews and awards
Reviews of Veselka in traditional press highlight its comfort food menu and describe the restaurant as a destination for late-night diners. After a renovation in 1995, The New York Times reassured regulars that the restaurant had not changed its menu. Representative awards include:
“True Taste of New York Award” from the New York City Hospitality Alliance in 2019
A sister restaurant, Veselka Bowery, located on East 1st Street and Bowery, opened in November 2011. Veselka Bowery offered a more “upscale” version of the Ukrainian comfort food that remains a staple of the menu of the original Veselka. It also offered an expansive drink menu and a selection of dozens of Eastern European vodkas. Veselka Bowery ran from November, 2011 to April, 2013.
