Get a taste of Russian fare and Soviet hospitality at Portland’s celebrated restaurant Kachka
Text by Martha Cheng
Images by Sera Lindsey
If you have ordered well at the restaurant Kachka—and the servers are happy to help you to do so—you will barely see the table under the platters and boards of pickles and dark brown bread; of khachapuri, pan-fried dough filled with cheese; of all manners of smoked and cured fishes. There will be shallow bowls of the hexagonal dumplings pelmeni and vareniki, some stuffed with beef, pork, and veal, and others plump with sour cherries. And there will be snow-white ribbons of salo, or fatback, arranged like a minimalist painting, accompanied by lines of coriander and raw shaved garlic, a dab of Russian mustard, anda tiny pot of honey. It is strange. It is startling. It is wonderful. It slaps your senses awake, like a shot of vodka. Of course, there is plenty of that here, too. With 60 vodkas, Kachka’s booze menu is longer than that of its food.
“When we started doing this, it was about honoring a culture and my family,” says Bonnie Morales, the owner and chef of Kachka, which serves Soviet fare. “I felt like if we weren’t going to do it, no one was.”
Forget borsch, the magenta beet soup, though it’s also on the menu and rich with braised short rib. Kachka will expand your knowledge of Russian food, smashing stereotypes of stodginess and replacing them with lively dishes in the setting of a Soviet-era grandma’s apartment. Though honestly, the experience most diners have with Russian fare is next to nothing. This is why chef and owner Bonnie Frumkin Morales and her husband, Israel, opened Kachka in the first place. It took a while for Morales to embrace the food of her Belarusian immigrant parents. She grew up in suburban Chicago and trained at the Culinary Institute of America, all the while embarrassed of Soviet cuisine. It wasn’t until she brought her future husband home and saw his delight in her family’s dishes that she began to rediscover the food of her heritage. Her mother unearthed nearly forgotten dishes, and Morales experienced the pleasuresof sauerkraut and sprat, tiny smoked fish from the Baltic Sea. She and her husband hatched a plan to open a restaurant where they would introduce others to the under-appreciated cuisine. They moved to Portland in 2010, drawn by its fresh produce and supportive community, and debuted Kachka four years later. “When we started doing this, it was about honoring a culture and my family,” she says. “I felt like if we weren’t going to do it, no one was.”
Once, Morales worried that Americans weren’t ready for Soviet cuisine. But since its opening in 2014, Kachka has landed on national best restaurant lists and captured the attention of press from Bon Appétit to The New York Times. It’s also expanding. Morales is converting the original Kachka into a more casual version, called Kachinka, or little duck, and moving Kachka to a new location, open in April 2018. But its spirit, from food to furnishings, will remain the same. Plus, Morales is adding some extras, like a deli of hard-to-find Russian foods and Kachka’s own line of vodka, including one infused with horseradish and smoothed with a touch of honey. There will also be a private dining room for large dinner parties, to deliver the optimal “Ruskie zakuski” experience, a spread of smoked and pickled dishes meant for sharing and washed down with plenty of vodka.
For the joy of Kachka lies not just in the updated Russian classics, but also in the Soviet style of boisterous hospitality it conveys, of endless food to be shared, of the clinking of glasses for toasts. The Soviet flavors may be foreign to most who dine there, but the love of food and company is welcomingly familiar.