New Restaurants in Kyiv to Know in 2026
Kyiv keeps opening restaurants. Through everything, cooks here have gone on cooking, and much of the new energy is pointed inward — a serious, unsentimental rethink of what the Ukrainian table can be, from the varenyky up. It is worth saying plainly, and without dressing it up: these are rooms that opened and are running, in a city that has good reason to be tired and isn't.
What follows are the 2025–2026 openings worth a table, grouped by the kind of meal they suit. Each one was verified as open at the time of writing.
A rethink of the Ukrainian table
The most interesting movement is chefs treating Ukrainian and regional cooking as something to author, not just preserve. On the reactivated VDNH grounds, Strichka (Стрічка, Akademika Hlushkova 1, opened July 2025) is a democratic, local-produce room from the experienced team behind Satori and UnderWu — varenyky, borshch, deruny and banosh given an author's treatment at prices meant to stay accessible, under mosaic interiors.
Smaller and more single-minded, Varyk (Варик, Dmytrivska 37, opened September 2025) is chef Alona Redka's roughly thirty-seat room built around fifteen kinds of handmade varenyky, plus a full breakfast — deliberately unpretentious, open kitchen, no manifesto beyond the dumplings. And Yash (Яш, Velyka Vasylkivska 34, opened October 2025) is the rarer thing: a platform for the cuisines of Ukraine's indigenous and southern peoples — Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar cooking prepared to halal principles by brand chef Zemfira Ziyaeva, with kyurze, dolma and cauldron plov. The name is the Crimean Tatar word for "to live."
Italian, done seriously
Two rooms make the case for craft over concept. Sarto (in the Passage, off Khreshchatyk, opened October 2025) is the ambitious one — an Italian restaurant, enoteca, bar and pastry shop under one roof from chef Stefano Antonioli, who has cooked in Ukraine for some twenty-five years: handmade pasta, bread off a fifteen-year sourdough, and a three-hundred-label list weighted to Italy.
Over in Podil, Khvyliasta (Хвиляста, Verkhnii Val 24, opened June 2025) is the tighter idea — a mono-format pasta bar of about two dozen seats, fresh pasta made in front of you at a central island to Italian-nonna recipes, the menu rotating monthly. It's from the Rest Emotion group, who know the neighbourhood well.
Out to the water
For a meal that's also a drive, Farm Table (at the Seven Lakes complex, just past the city's western edge, opened October 2025) is a genuine farm-to-table kitchen from chef Yurii Tkachenko: carp and other fish pulled from the complex's own lakes, seasonal produce and game cooked over live fire, in a lakeside building of red sandstone and timber by YOD Group. Frame it as a destination rather than a walk-in — but on a clear day, that's the point.
How to keep up
A list like this is accurate the week it's written and slowly drifts after. The point of Better Taste is that the Kyiv catalogue is curated and kept current, so you carry the whole edit in your pocket rather than bookmarking a post — filter it by Ukrainian restaurants or wine bar, and save the rooms you mean to get to.
Start with the openings above, then browse the full Kyiv catalogue.