Ukrainian East Village Restaurant

Everyone knows the Ukrainian diner on the corner. Fewer people walk a few steps up Second Avenue into the Ukrainian National Home, a community hall in a building that dates to the 1830s, where a quieter dining room has been serving home cooking since the 1960s. It feels like a parish supper: plain tables, family photographs, a menu that has hardly moved.

Order varenyky, hand-made dumplings filled with potato, cheese, meat or sauerkraut and mushroom, with fried onions and sour cream; a bowl of deep-red borscht; holubtsi, the stuffed cabbage; and a goulash or schnitzel if you are staying a while. It is a living piece of the old Little Ukraine, and a calm place to eat it.