Streecha: authentic, grandmother-cooked Ukranian food served cafeteria style

I know, I know; it doesn't look like much. Between the trash bin and the air duct underneath the plain restaurant sign resembling more of a lost dog poster you would see taped to a telephone pole and the nondescript door at the bottom of the staircase below the barbershop-esque "Open" sign, this little mom-and-pop hole-in-the-wall doesn't exactly scream out "good food". But fret not New Yorkers, this is Streecha, a Ukrainian restaurant staffed by actual Ukrainian grandmothers cooking authentic Eastern European food in a church basement reminiscent of your elementary school's cafeteria.

Frequented mostly by Ukranians and the occasional discerning diner, Streecha's entrance and dining hall is just as elaborate as its storefront:

With walls covered in Roman Catholic symbols and paintings of the occasional Ukrainian poet, the front desk is staffed by a friendly American-Ukrainian woman, with a short and simple menu taped down at the front:

Unfortunately, they were all out of their immensely popular pierogis, so I went with a cup of borscht and a stuffed cabbage, and my friend Anastasia went with a rose jam doughnut. (Yep, that's right. It's a jelly/jam doughnut, with the filling made from rose petals.)

After ordering, we were given our food in less than two minutes, brought to us in paper carnival bowls seated on red cafeteria trays. I first turned to the stuffed cabbage, and after the first bite, my previous disappointment about not having pierogis disappeared. The chewy cabbage exterior covered with a generous heaping of sweet onions sautéed in butter went perfectly with the rice and pork stuffing, with just enough meat to give you the impression that you're eating a pork stuffed cabbage roll, but not so much meat lest you forget the humble Ukrainian farmer traditions behind the dish as a vegetarian meal stuffed solely with rice due to high costs of meat.

To wash down the cabbage roll, I reached to the side for my borsht. This is definitively not fine dining; it's served in the Dixie cup's stepbrother that no one talks about, and the floating bits of onion, carrot, cabbage, and beet give you the feeling that you're knocking back some strange, warm Eastern European version of the cerviche. 

But once again, the Ukranian grandmothers running the kitchen at Streecha came through; the borsht was sweet at the front, but not clawingly so, and then sour, with a rich beet flavor one only tastes in the best of borshts. 

And that leaves the pièce de résistance, the topic of much linguistic debate after John F. Kennedy's famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech and one of the hallmark breakfast meals of the grab-and-go, nine-to-five commuter: the jelly/jam doughnut. In this case, "jam doughnut" would be a more fitting name, but let's not get into semantics. When you bite into it, the powdered sugar gives you a temporary white mustache as you chew through the fluffy, cloud-like pastry. Then you get to the injection of rose petal jam, completing a trifecta of flavors that provides the sweet doughnut taste you were looking for, but not the increased heartbeat you get after finishing a diabetic shock-inducing, overly sweet Dunkin Donuts jelly doughnut. 

You can find this gem tucked away in the East Village on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue at 33 E 7th Street, open from Friday - Sunday from 10AM to 4PM. And when you go, maybe you can try out the pierogis that weren't available the day I went; the Ukranians who introduced me to this place swear by them.