Corridor Buzz - The Premier Source of Arts & Entertainment News and Information for the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Corridor

REVIEW: Cozy Tatyana's Kitchen feels like home

By LaDawn Edwards

I like the idea of meeting a friend for lunch in an antique shop, so Mount Vernon didn’t seem too far away to get together with Barbara. Tatyana's Kitchen is located in a lovely old brick house on Main Street (which still bore faint traces of artwork from the recent Chalk the Walk festival) and a red white and blue banner out front proclaimed ANTIQUES. The fact that this restaurant is run by the same Tatyana Kieler whose goodies were so memorable at last summer’s farmers markets quickened my steps up the sidewalk.

While we were tempted to sit on the porch and enjoy the view of the iris garden, I thought it might be too sunny without a hat, so we found a table in the main dining room. I knew that this place was small, but didn’t realize that the proprietress is actually a one woman show — waitress, hostess and cook. Since we arrived at 12:30 and nearly every table was full, it took a while to get our drinks and order.

The day’s specials are on a board behind the counter. We got the seafood chowder — a luscious creamy onion soup punctuated with chunks of crab. We ordered the daily salad also — it sounded like some kind of Ukrainian coleslaw — but it never appeared.

I was primarily interested in the potato mushroom crepes. She must make them ahead of the lunch rush, because one of mine was still cold in the center, but the flavor was wonderful, all wrapped up blintz-like in a thick buckwheat pancake. Barbara ordered something called a borek, which had layers of phyllo dough married with cheddar, mozzarella and cream cheese. Somewhere inside there should have been mushrooms and spinach but my dominant impression was “this is a good way to treat cheese.”

We only had four choices for dessert, so we settled on the pistachio baklava with lime sauce — because I knew I would love it — and the chocolate cake roll. The traditional Mediterranean dessert was so buttery and crisp that four tiny pieces almost seemed too much. The cake roll reminded me of the Yule logs you get at Christmas — sweet and slightly dry, but very tasty.

All in all, we were very happy with the food and didn’t mind the leisurely pace of lunch, which gave us time to chat and admire Debbie Brooks’ paintings on the walls. When I went up to pay, I was surprised by lilting laughter. I noticed the people before me had folded their tip dollars into three origami frogs and were showing Tatayana how to make them jump — another cozy example of how this restaurant feels like a visit to your favorite aunt's.

Mount Vernon still observes the small town tradition of having stores open late one night every week(so the farmers can come shop, originally.) To accommodate those shoppers Tatayana offers fancier Thursday night dinners and the word is that these are "quite interesting and special." Call about private parties other nights of the week.

I suspect that Tatyana is just on the fence between being too busy to do everything herself and being ready to hire some help. I hope she makes the leap soon, because traditional home cooking like this should have diners beating a path to her door in Mount Vernon.