Coffee Break

By Walter Kish

One of the pleasanter aspects of my travels around Ukraine this past year has been discovering and enjoying the pleasures of Ukrainian cafйs. Western Ukraine and Lviv, in particular, are rich in a distinctive cafй culture, having inherited the tradition from the days when this area was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

The kaviarna or coffee house is as much a part of the Lviv landscape as the korchma or knaipa, the popular local terms for the neighbourhood watering hole. The period of Austrian rule saw a flowering in the number and influence of cafйs on Lviv society and culture. In the early decades of the twentieth century, stopping by the local kaviarna for a mala chorna (small, black) and a perusal of the daily paper was a standard daily custom. The most popular cafйs of that time went by such names as the Videnka, the Teatralka, the Amerikanka, the Monopolka, the Tsentralka and the Shtuka.

Even today, no trip to Lviv can be considered complete without a tour of its more prominent kaviarny. The most famous and popular are the Videnska (Vienna) in central Lviv on Prospekt Svobody, the Amadeus on Kathedralna and the Veronika on Prospekt Shevchenka. My own personal favourite is Dzyha, a bohemian cafй-art gallery at the end of Virmenska (Armenian) Street that reeks of history, culture and at times cigarette smoke.

Although many may be aware that the Austrians were responsible for introducing coffee to Western Ukraine, few people may know that it was a Ukrainian that introduced coffee to Austria, and Vienna specifically. In 1683, following the defeat of the Turkish armies besieging Vienna, an enterprising Kozak by the name of Yuri Kulchitsky, who had done service to the Austrians during the conflict, claimed as his reward a large quantity of some curious beans that had been left behind by the retreating Ottomans. Yuri, who had previously spent some time in Turkey and recognized the beans as coffee, used his new hoard to open up Vienna’s first coffee house, which he called the Zur Blauen Flasche or the Blue Bottle. He also developed the filter brewing process now commonly used and began the custom of sweetening the coffee with sugar and adding milk to it. The rest is of course, history.

It is interesting to note that if you do some research on the origins of coffee houses in Vienna, you will find that the Austrians claim that it was an Austrian by the name of Franz Georg Kolschitsky who introduced it, while the Poles attribute it to one of their countrymen by the name of Franceszek Jerzy Kulczycki. However, to paraphrase a famous quote, a Kozak by any other name is still…

Of cour-se, no one argues that Turkey was the original source of coffee to Europe. They adopted it from the Arabs who brought it over from its original home in Ethiopia. The Turks and Tatars were, of course, frequent “visitors” to Ukraine from the thirteenth century AD on, and it is no surprise that they brought coffee with them. Historical records show that the Kozak Hetmans Bohdan Khmelnitsky and Pylyp Orlyk were familiar with and drank coffee. The first recorded coffee house that we know of in Ukraine was opened in 1672 in Kamianets-Podilsky.

Needless to say, Western Ukraine is not the only area of Ukraine where coffee is popular. Crimea, with its large Tatar population, also has a strong coffee-drinking tradition. Here, the form commonly imbibed is the strong and potent Turkish variety, brewed in distinctively shaped small copper pots called ibriks, and served in tiny cups comparable to those used elsewhere for espresso.

Kyiv, too, is rich in coffee houses. My personal favourite is the exotic African Kaffa cafй in a little alley near the Maidan. It boasts a palm tree for its dйcor and a coffee menu as long as a giraffe’s neck. The several outlets under the name of Reprisa often tempt me as well with the added perk of their incomparably wide and tasty selection of decadent desserts. 

Come to think of it, I think it’s time to take a break and go have a cup of coffee!