Ukrainian diner Veselka has become an institution in the East Village. When Russia invade the country, lines of of people flocked there to show their support and eat pierogies.

The original restaurant opened in 1954 in a part of the city known as Little Ukraine. There’s still a strong Ukrainian presence, but many of the similar low-cost diners like Odessa and Neptune have since closed down.

Veselka, and the other Ukrainian diners, served a combination of traditional American diner classics, and Ukrainian favorites like pierogi, potato pancakes, and borscht. This combination has seen the restaurant appear on numerous cheap eats lists in the city.

What the restaurant has actually been best known for is as a late night destination. That changed during the pandemic, when overnight service was shut down. The East Village location now closes at 1 am, which speaks to the city’s slow post pandemic recovery.

A bright spot for the restaurant though has been in online orders shipped nationally. To service these customers, and other operations around the city Veselka opened a centralized kitchen in Williamsburg, and to our benefit, opened a small-scale version of the restaurant to serve the neighborhood.

The Williamsburg location opened to crowds. Landing a table during weekend brunch was tough. We tried once or twice before giving up. Still, a fellow daycare parent suggested the pancakes were a great way of satisfying small tummies. But how to get a table? They recently joined Resy, at least for weekday reservations.

The Juneteenth school holiday offered us the opportunity to test things. It was less full than we expected when we arrived for our 11:30 reservation, and our four-year-old was throwing an epic fit. Still, we managed to enjoy our meal, meeting our friend visiting from Queens.

We had promised our four-year-old that we’d be having a pancake party. (He considers any meal with more than my wife and I a party).

We started out with a cup of milk for our kid. I was expecting one of those small diner glasses full, but instead got the large clear solo cup, the kind that is usually a giant iced coffee. He drank a few sips of this before abandoning it.

My wife and our friend ordered watermelon juices which came with chunks of watermelon. We all did consider ordering the advertised cold borscht, but none of us took the bait.

The pancakes we ordered for our four-year-old were classic diner pancakes. The daycare-parent suggestion was spot on. But since a four-year-old can at best eat one pancake, I was able to have one too. They had that perfectly diner pancake buttery goodness, and we splurged on Veselka-branded real maple syrup too.

My wife went with the Western Omelet. What’s great about Veselka is that instead of greasy hashbrowns, the omelet was served with a traditional potato pancake.

I was ready for something more akin to lunch. I was tempted by the Rueben. I really was. But it was so hot already that afternoon I didn’t want such a heavy sandwich and went with the Chicken schnitzel. This was such an excellent choice given how hot it was outside.

The sandwich was served with spicy greens and a tangy cream sauce. It was light and refreshing, and the chicken schnitzel had a great crispy crunch on the breading. Our four-year-old helped out with the french fries.

Our friend from Queens went with a more traditional route ordering a combo of pierogies and matzah ball soup. The matzah ball soup actually looked quite good with chunks of chicken. The matzah ball itself was properly proportioned too – often, diners will make enormous matza balls and leave them sitting in broth too long so they are both very big and waterlogged. That’s not the case at veselka.

The pierogies were a choice, mix and match combination. I wasn’t wasn’t paying too much attention to what our friend ordered, though I’m pretty sure she had at least one classic cheese.

There’s no shortage of pierogies and latkes in the area owing to Greenpoint’s Polish restaurants, but Velka does bring its own unique brand and flavors to the neighborhood.

Like the expansion of so many other New York City minichains, Veselka’s novelty in the neighborhood has faded, and it’s now part of the ebbing rhythm of the neighborhood.

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