What is the national dish of Ukraine?

Borscht. UNESCO added the culture of Ukrainian borscht cooking to its list of intangible cultural heritage in need of urgent safeguarding in 2022.

What should I try first?

Borscht with sour cream, then varenyky with potato and fried onion. Between them they cover most of what the cuisine is about.

Is Ukrainian food spicy?

Rarely hot. The flavour comes from garlic, dill, black pepper, smoked pork fat, sour cream and pickled vegetables.

What do Ukrainians eat at Christmas?

Twelve meatless dishes on Christmas Eve, opening with kutia — wheat with poppy seed, honey and nuts — and including lean borscht, varenyky, holubtsi, fish and uzvar.

Where can I buy Ukrainian food near Ottawa?

Ukrainian vendors and community kitchens sell at the UAFest market and food court on festival day in Carleton Place, and several take orders year-round through the vendors listed on this site.

Home/Guides/Ukrainian Kitchen

← All guides

Ukrainian Food: A Plain Guide to What Is on the Table

The UAFest kitchen team

August 2026 · 10 min read

Ukrainian cooking comes from black soil and long winters: wheat, buckwheat, beets, cabbage, potatoes, pork, dairy and preserved everything. It is generous food, meant to be shared, and most of it takes time rather than technique.

This is the short guide to the table — what each dish is, when it appears, and what to reach for first if you have never eaten any of it.

The everyday dishes

These are the ones a Ukrainian household actually cooks week to week, and the ones a festival kitchen makes in the largest quantity.

Borscht — beet and cabbage soup on a rich broth, served with sour cream and dark bread. The national dish, and the subject of a UNESCO heritage listing in 2022.
Varenyky — boiled dumplings filled with potato, cabbage, cheese or summer fruit, topped with fried onion and sour cream.
Holubtsi — cabbage leaves rolled around rice and meat, baked slowly in tomato and sour cream.
Deruny — potato pancakes, crisp at the edges, eaten hot with sour cream.
Kovbasa — coarse garlic sausage, grilled or smoked; the smell of it carries across a festival field.
Salo — cured pork fat, sliced thin, eaten with rye bread, raw garlic and a pickle. Deeply Ukrainian, and not the health food.

Bread, and what it means

Bread carries weight beyond the meal. Korovai, a braided wedding loaf decorated with dough birds and periwinkle, is baked by married women and given to the couple. Paska is the tall, sweet Easter bread blessed in a basket at church on Easter morning.

The everyday loaf is rye or a mixed wheat-and-rye, and it goes with everything on this page.

Twelve dishes for Christmas Eve

Sviata Vecheria, the Holy Supper, is served on Christmas Eve when the first star appears. Twelve meatless dishes are laid out, one for each apostle, and the meal opens with kutia — wheat berries with poppy seed, honey and nuts.

The rest of the table is a lean version of the everyday food: borscht without meat, varenyky with cabbage or mushrooms, holubtsi with rice, pickled herring, stewed fruit compote called uzvar. Since 2023 most Ukrainian communities in Canada keep the supper on December 24.

Sweets

Syrnyky are fried cheese pancakes made with fresh farmer cheese, eaten for breakfast with sour cream and jam. Medivnyk is a spiced honey cake. Pampushky are yeast buns — savoury with garlic and oil alongside borscht, or sweet and filled with rose jam.

Where to eat all of it in one afternoon

A festival is the shortest route through a cuisine. UAFest runs a food court and a Korchma — the Ukrainian Tavern, a hospitality area for traditional food and drinks — at Riverside Park in Carleton Place, about 45 minutes west of Ottawa. Borscht, varenyky, cabbage rolls, grilled sausage and sweets are served all day on September 13, 2026, from 12 PM to 6 PM.