Veselka

Veselka
Veselka Restaurant, New York City (2007)
Restaurant information
Established	1954
Current owner(s)	Tom Birchard
Food type	Ukrainian, Eastern European, American comfort
Dress code	Casual
City	New York City
State	New York
Postal/ZIP code	10003
Country	United States
Other locations	Little Veselka, Veselka Bowery
Other information	Family owned and operated
Website	http://www.veselka.com/

Veselka is a Ukrainian 24-hour restaurant in New York City’s East Village.

It was established in 1954 by post-World War II Ukrainian refugees Wolodymyr and Olha Darmochawal and is one of the last of the many Slavic restaurants that once proliferated the neighborhood. A cookbook, published in October 2009 by St. Martin’s Press, highlights more than 120 of the restaurant’s Eastern European recipes.

A sister restaurant, Veselka Bowery, on East 1st Street and Bowery, opened in November 2011.

In 1954, the Darmochwals purchased a candy shop and newsstand at Second Avenue and East 9th Street in New York City in an effort to help the Ukrainian Youth Association purchase the building that housed its headquarters. Wolodymyr Darmochwal gave this venture the moniker ‘’Veselka’’ – the Ukrainian word for rainbow.

In 1960, Darmochwal combined the candy store and newsstand with an adjacent luncheonette.

In the following years, as the East Village became known as the Haight-Ashbury of the east coast, Veselka became a social center for a cross-section of the community that included old-world tradition and new-world counterculture.

By the time that New York City’s economic crisis hit in the 1970s, Veselka was a fixture in the neighborhood. It was able to expand during the economic recovery of the 1980s, at which time the row of phone booths at the rear of the restaurant came to be used as informal office space for East Village performance artists.

The 1980s, Veselka began receiving reviews and awards that spread its reputation beyond its immediate neighborhood. That reputation was further cemented when the restaurant was used as a location for the films Trust the Man (2006), Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist (2008) and Trainwreck (2015) and memorialized in the songs "Veselka Diner" by Doctor Rokit and “Veselka” by Greta Gertler, which was National Public Radio’s “Song of the Day” on January 24, 2008. Veselka is also featured in City of Fallen Angels, the fourth book in Cassandra Clare's The Mortal Instruments series.