Restaurants

By Guy Dimond

Just when I thought I'd seen it all - every conceivable dining concept, from Sino-Cuban fusion food, through bars carved from ice, to restaurants where the waitresses are drag queens - along comes Modern Ukrainian dining, set in a pre-revolutionary palace, two minutes from Piccadilly Circus.

'Divo' means 'wonder' or 'marvel' in Russian, and this restaurant certainly is a wonder to behold. The very grand St James's building that once housed the ill-fated W'Sens restaurant has been transformed with huge drapes, chandeliers, folk art, oversized furniture, and menus almost large enough to hide a copy of the Evening Standard inside. But rather than being stately and imposing, the result looks nouveau riche, the sort of taste that some Kiev wheeler-dealers might adopt on suddenly coming into money. Which is perhaps not surprising, as Divo is the latest branch of a restaurant company based in Odessa, one of the Ukraine's Black Sea ports. 'People from Odessa are renowned for their sense of humour,' my Russian pal Julia dryly observed. But it's a thin line between ironic and naff. You will either find Divo's interior vulgar, or funny, or puzzling, or - as I did - a mixture of all three.

The waitresses are dressed in a variation of the sarafan - the Ukrainian folk dress, consisting of a laced, bust-accentuating bodice over an embroidered blouse. Sarafani are usually ankle-length, but the Divo version is like a pleated miniskirt, and had big ribbons lacing the bodice at the back, like gift-wrapping. Agent Provocateur will no doubt be doing their own version next season.

The Russian-speaking waitresses did not stop smiling throughout the meal, but they could use a little more training on the food. Chicken Kiev was our waitress's recommendation of a traditional Ukrainian dish; wrong, as chicken Kiev was invented by a Frenchman and is a dish eaten at all points west of the Urals. Nil points for food knowledge, but we were charmed by her smiles anyway.

All this shouldn't distract you from the cooking, however, because what we tried was good to very good. The long menu is laden with classic and traditional Ukrainian dishes, plus a few more recognisably 'modern' ones (cue pine nuts and red mullet) - plus, of course, buckets of caviar for business oligarchs, Russian mafia and footballers' wives.

We stuck to the classics. Ukrainian food is very similar to Russian, but with some regional variation in dish styles. Divo's version of borscht, the beetroot soup, was a light version. Many recipes for borscht are dark, rich and dense, perfect for long winter nights, but this had less garlic and spice clout than we expected. A light touch was also applied to the layered herring salad. Divo's version, unlike the rustic one served as part of the starter courses in the Ukraine, looked like fine pâtisserie with its layered stripes of dark beetroot, pale potato, egg and chopped onion, the plate sprinkled with chopped egg yolk and artistic drizzles of mayonnaise. Beautiful.

Ukraine's ravioli-like dumplings are called vareniki or pelmeni, depending on size, type of filling and so forth. Our vareniki got the thumbs-up from Julia, who was brought up on them: delicate pasta cases with a smooth potato filling, though the diced and fried bacon topping raised her eyebrows. 'They are crazy people these Ukrainians. This should be pig fat. There isn't enough pig fat on this menu.' Yet Divo is clearly trying (and succeeding) to deliver proper Ukrainian food, without scaring away Londoners who may balk at its more rustic aspects.

It's hard to know who Divo is aimed at. Julia's first impression: Russians, Ukrainians, Belarussians. My first impression: dirty old men with expense accounts. But after eating there, we had to rethink. The service is lovely, the cooking's very good of its type, and we can't think of any better place in London to try proper Ukrainian food. But then we can't think of any other place in London to eat Ukrainian food, either.

Time Out issue 1938: October 10-16 2007