At Belarussian Xata, Hearty Fare to Keep the Spirits Light
By LIGAYA MISHAN, The New Your Times
26 February 2018, 18:14
At Belarussian Xata in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, birch sap comes in a tall carafe, unclouded and pure. The taste is close to water, only water as if just rained down and sipped from a blossom, with a delicate, attenuated sweetness: what a dryad might live on.
Two-fifths of the landlocked former Soviet republic of Belarus is cloaked in woods, including remnants of the great forest that rose from the European Plain 10,000 years ago. The Belarusians have drunk birch sap for centuries. Now some in the United States extol the drink as a rival to coconut water, for its supposed restorative powers. We are late to the party.
Certainly there is an odd magic at work at Belarussian Xata, where, as the meal progresses, the food grows increasingly rich — a kind of homage to hyperphagia, the fattening period before hibernation — yet the spirit stays light. It could be the birch sap or the horseradish-spiked vodka, scouring tongue and soul; the postcard-pretty tables draped with rushnyky, ceremonial embroidered linen towels that follow Belarusians from birth to death, and surrounded by wooden fences with upturned pitchers hanging from the posts; or a shyly charming waiter who whispers, of one particular dish: “Of course my mother’s is better.”
![At Belarussian Xata, Hearty Fare to Keep the Spirits Light]( "At Belarussian Xata, Hearty Fare to Keep the Spirits Light")
To begin: zakuski, small plates that are not so small. Hog ears are fried into strips, with more crunch than fat. A sushi board becomes a platform for open-faced herring sandwiches, built not on bread but rounds of potato, cucumber and hard-boiled egg; the brininess is tempered by sour cream and a confetti of red onion.
The chef, Ilya Frolov, was born in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. He makes honorable, old-country draniki, cakes of grated potato, bound by egg and bronzed in a pan. They might be interleaved with slices of pork neck under a mantle of melted cheese, but are just as good with nothing but sour cream. Kolduni start with the same potato batter, only inside is buried treasure — meat or mushrooms, in a creamy lather.
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Fanned out on a platter are swirled bouquets of salo (cured fatback), in three varieties: Belarusian, plush and quick to liquid on the tongue; smoked, its flavor shading toward aged Cheddar; and Hungarian, aflutter with paprika. Stalks of green onion, cherry tomatoes and a broken-down head of garlic crowd around, with splendidly fuming potatoes in a skillet alongside. (A more modest, singular helping of salo is accompanied by batons of rye bread as fat as French fries, crisped in butter, rubbed with garlic and tumbled into a cone of newspaper.)
In borscht, the sweetness of the beets is kept in check by salty nubs of pork and beef. Yellow split pea soup, soothing and mild, lands on the table with a pork rib jutting out, the hilt thoughtfully wrapped in foil and the meat smoke incarnate.
![At Belarussian Xata, Hearty Fare to Keep the Spirits Light]( "At Belarussian Xata, Hearty Fare to Keep the Spirits Light")
The main courses bring more pork. For machanka, hunks of rib, shoulder and a peasant-style sausage made in-house are left to commune in a pot for hours and presented with draniki or kerchiefs of blini, the better to soak up the stew. Neat bundles of cabbage divulge pork, beef and carrots, gently sweet. A monumental pork knuckle is braised and then baked until the fat wobbles off its flanks, calling to mind a slow avalanche.
The first Belarussian Xata opened in 2012 in the Basmanny District of Moscow, a few blocks from the Belarusian Embassy. Its Brooklyn outpost followed this past September, taking over a two-story building once home to Cafe Glechik, a Ukrainian spot. Marat Novikov, a businessman from Minsk who brought his family to Brooklyn in 1989, as the Soviet Union was reeling from internal unrest, runs both restaurants with the help of his son, Andrey; his daughter, Olga; and her husband, Steve Palanker, a native of Moldova.
A few recipes come from Mr. Novikov’s mother, like a perfect dessert of little orbs of tangy yogurt cheese, flecked with poppy seeds and simmered in sour cream. Room, too, should be made for sour cherry dumplings in crimson-stained skins and a trompe-l’oeil chocolate salami conjured out of crushed biscuits, cocoa, hazelnuts and prunes.
This is plenty, to be embraced and shared. A night at Belarussian Xata can feel as though you’ve crashed a dozen parties at once, all in full swing. One night, a group of women lingered for hours in a corner, deep in talk and growly laughter; only around 10 p.m. did their first zakuski arrive. They were in no hurry. They knew the value of time.
26 February 2018, 18:14
Credit: Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
Two-fifths of the landlocked former Soviet republic of Belarus is cloaked in woods, including remnants of the great forest that rose from the European Plain 10,000 years ago. The Belarusians have drunk birch sap for centuries. Now some in the United States extol the drink as a rival to coconut water, for its supposed restorative powers. We are late to the party.
Certainly there is an odd magic at work at Belarussian Xata, where, as the meal progresses, the food grows increasingly rich — a kind of homage to hyperphagia, the fattening period before hibernation — yet the spirit stays light. It could be the birch sap or the horseradish-spiked vodka, scouring tongue and soul; the postcard-pretty tables draped with rushnyky, ceremonial embroidered linen towels that follow Belarusians from birth to death, and surrounded by wooden fences with upturned pitchers hanging from the posts; or a shyly charming waiter who whispers, of one particular dish: “Of course my mother’s is better.”
Kolduni start with a batter of grated potato, bound by egg. Inside is buried treasure — meat or mushrooms, in a creamy lather. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
To begin: zakuski, small plates that are not so small. Hog ears are fried into strips, with more crunch than fat. A sushi board becomes a platform for open-faced herring sandwiches, built not on bread but rounds of potato, cucumber and hard-boiled egg; the brininess is tempered by sour cream and a confetti of red onion.
The chef, Ilya Frolov, was born in Minsk, the Belarusian capital. He makes honorable, old-country draniki, cakes of grated potato, bound by egg and bronzed in a pan. They might be interleaved with slices of pork neck under a mantle of melted cheese, but are just as good with nothing but sour cream. Kolduni start with the same potato batter, only inside is buried treasure — meat or mushrooms, in a creamy lather.
Continue reading the main story
Fanned out on a platter are swirled bouquets of salo (cured fatback), in three varieties: Belarusian, plush and quick to liquid on the tongue; smoked, its flavor shading toward aged Cheddar; and Hungarian, aflutter with paprika. Stalks of green onion, cherry tomatoes and a broken-down head of garlic crowd around, with splendidly fuming potatoes in a skillet alongside. (A more modest, singular helping of salo is accompanied by batons of rye bread as fat as French fries, crisped in butter, rubbed with garlic and tumbled into a cone of newspaper.)
In borscht, the sweetness of the beets is kept in check by salty nubs of pork and beef. Yellow split pea soup, soothing and mild, lands on the table with a pork rib jutting out, the hilt thoughtfully wrapped in foil and the meat smoke incarnate.
A night at Belarussian Xata can feel as though you’ve crashed a dozen parties at once, all in full swing. Credit Sasha Maslov for The New York Times
The main courses bring more pork. For machanka, hunks of rib, shoulder and a peasant-style sausage made in-house are left to commune in a pot for hours and presented with draniki or kerchiefs of blini, the better to soak up the stew. Neat bundles of cabbage divulge pork, beef and carrots, gently sweet. A monumental pork knuckle is braised and then baked until the fat wobbles off its flanks, calling to mind a slow avalanche.
The first Belarussian Xata opened in 2012 in the Basmanny District of Moscow, a few blocks from the Belarusian Embassy. Its Brooklyn outpost followed this past September, taking over a two-story building once home to Cafe Glechik, a Ukrainian spot. Marat Novikov, a businessman from Minsk who brought his family to Brooklyn in 1989, as the Soviet Union was reeling from internal unrest, runs both restaurants with the help of his son, Andrey; his daughter, Olga; and her husband, Steve Palanker, a native of Moldova.
A few recipes come from Mr. Novikov’s mother, like a perfect dessert of little orbs of tangy yogurt cheese, flecked with poppy seeds and simmered in sour cream. Room, too, should be made for sour cherry dumplings in crimson-stained skins and a trompe-l’oeil chocolate salami conjured out of crushed biscuits, cocoa, hazelnuts and prunes.
This is plenty, to be embraced and shared. A night at Belarussian Xata can feel as though you’ve crashed a dozen parties at once, all in full swing. One night, a group of women lingered for hours in a corner, deep in talk and growly laughter; only around 10 p.m. did their first zakuski arrive. They were in no hurry. They knew the value of time.
