Ivan The Kozak    東歐餐廳    

Russian and Ukrainian food, classic and authentic just as advertised.

The food was great, and the restaurant staff certainly knew what they were talking about when you asked for more information about any of the dishes.

What I disliked was that there was when you enter the restaurant it has a smell of mold. If you never been to Russia you could think that maybe this is a classical Russian restaurant smell... But the next event explained everything.

What totally disgusted me and made me stop eating is that a cockroach was running on the walls. I have not even seen this in a restaurant in the Philippines. A lot may go on in kitchens, but I just don't want to be reminded of it while eating my food!

So, perhaps, if you like your food with a little bit of extra insect meat, you can consider this restaurant.

Would not eat here again!

Authentic and cosy décor restaurant. It has a massive storage to keep the Russian vodka at its best condition. However, staffs don’t really know what they are doing, at least they are friendly.

Cuisine: Russian
Food rating: 3/10*
Service: 4/10
Ambiance: 6/10

* Food Rating: 6/10 is equivalent to 1 Michelin star, 8/10 to two Michelin stars, and 9/10 or 10/10 to three Michelin stars

三文魚子醬(2/10)
You pay for what you get. Not the top quality red caviar, it was all right. The crepe wasn’t the best that you would imagine. But you can’t enjoy Russian cuisine without caviar and vodka.

馬豆湯 (3/10)
It was simple and full of flavour. Fairly seasoned, not a bad soup.

焗蘋果鴨胸(2/10)
The duck was over cooked slight, frozen duck breast was used, lacked a bit of freshness. It was creamy and sweet, and the pastry went really well with the fish.

俄國蘋果肉桂薄餅(4/10)
It was a classic Russian dessert. Personally, I thought the crepe from Ivan the Kozak was not buttery and creamy enough. They are pre made, serve cold.

If you haven’t tried Russian cuisine before, Ivan the Kozak is not a bad choice. It reminds me my best friend’s mother cooking.

It was my mom's birthday dinner and it was our first time trying 'rabbit'.

It is free or charge bringing your birthday cake as long as you don't use coupons. They played a modern style birthday song and prepared candles. Staffs are nice, okay food and it's worth to go only trying the rabbit (taste bit like tuna /chicken LOL)

We order 2Rabbit, 1Beef stew with pastry, 1Lamb shoulder and 1Pig knuckles.
It was $11XX for 5persons

When I stepped into the restaurant, I noticed a very weird smell which is similar to the smell in a washroom.

I ordered the fish for lunch, which also had strange smell and taste.

When we found the some of the orders were not delievered, the staff there said "I don't know why it's wrong... I took your order vey carefully, I also don't know why the orders are not delivered."........

Overall, it's a very bad dining experience, and I will never visit this restaurant again.

Well, Ivan the Kozak is unique. I’ll give it that! When I walked in I was very aware of how dim and dark the place is. The walls have windows painted on to them, with views of green pastures in the distance, but there’s actually no natural light in the place. The chairs have embroidered cushions on them like you are at your (Russian?) grandma’s. The place also has quite a stale smell, and the decorations hanging on the wall look like they haven’t been dusted since 1987.

We were there for lunch and went for the $59 set lunch option. For that price we got soup of the day, plus our choice of a main course and a drink.

We both had the mushroom soup, which was a light broth with a mix of mushrooms and some potato in it. I really liked the thin soup and all the mushrooms of different shapes and sizes.Unfortunately, the mains were really average. When my friend’s “lamb stew” arrived, I wondered whether they’d forgotten (a) to cook the meat and (b) to turn it into a stew – shouldn’t stew be cooked in a sauce? You can see from the pictures yourself. Quite possibly the most unappetising meal I’ve ever seen. I had the pan fried sole fish, which wasn’t too bad. The fish had a light batter on it, covered with a sauce that was thick like normal gravy, but had the tang of mayonnaise or something. Both main courses were served with a cabbage salad, and the only thing you could taste in it was raw garlic – a bit too raw for me. You can choose between spaghetti, rice or mashed potato to go with the main courses. For my drink I ordered the rose honey tea, which was like sipping on liquid Turkish delight. It was bright pink and really sweet, and was probably more like drinking jelly mix after you’ve added the hot water to the jelly crystals before it all sets. One last thing – the flashing neon lights out on Cochrane St pointing you to Ivan the Kozak might seem a bit random, but when you get inside and listen to the Russian disco beats that are playing, it all kind of makes sense.

Happy Anniversary dinner

It's a nice night dining at Ivan the Kozak.

We ordered soup, fried fish with Kozak source, Lamp shoulder, and an apple pancake.
All are delicious!!! Worth to visit again...

The prices are reasonable and the environment is very nice and comfortable!
It's a restaurant operated by a family. They are very nice!!
It's not as similar as other restaurants, which's more special than others! There're not much people around 7:30pm!!

The service is excellent!!!

ivan the kozak is well-known for its dinner menu and ice vodka bar. but i bet not many people would heard of or have tried its lunch menu. my mum and i were tempted by the attractive price of the lunch salad buffet and decided to give it a try.

the restaurant had more vacant seats than filled and it seemed we were the only table ordering salad buffet. anyways, the central table looked pretty filled by different plates of colourful salads. and after scooping just a spoonful of everything i had already completely covered my plate with a rich variety of veggies.

the 'colesaw' was more sour than its american version and the purple cabbage one,surprisingly, tasted like regular colesaw.
there was a celery-apple-pineapple mix which tasted average.
there was also a plate of mysterious ham-and-i dunno what it is thin pastry salad which somehow tasted like cheese and egg.
at one corner of the pate i had a scoop of regular caesar salad which was okay.
my mum and i loved the mushroom salad best although i couldnt quite relate it to russia or eastern europe-the 'dressing' was actually similar to thai sweet 'n sour sauce.
the tomato and mushroom salad tasted okay too.
last there was three more creamy salads of orange, green and pale creamy color. the orange carrot salad tasted like regular potato salad, the green with the semblance of a creamy spinach and the pale creamy one of normal salad mix.
two soups were available but it was a pity that both tasted nothing but diluted chicken broth.
apple and oranges were also available as desserts; there was also cubes of coarsely cut apple cake which tasted rough.
but well...with 65 HKD what more can you expect?

I had dinner with my friends in this restaurant on 24th April. Its decoration was nice and I loved the atmosphere in this restaurant.

I ordered the main course Grilled Baby Chicken w/ Homemade Tomato Sauce and blackberry juice. The size of the dish was suitable and the chicken was juicy. The blackberry juice wasn’t quite special and a little bit expensive.

The services were quite good and Ivan was talkative and he shared some interesting story regarding the history of Russian Cuisine with us.

Overall, it is recommended to have Russian Cuisine in this restaurant.

I enjoyed my first visit to this restaurant 3 weeks ago on a Saturday evening. The restaurant is decorated with orange colour along with all the Russian/ Ukrainian speaking waitresses creates a warm yet energetic atmosphere to diners.

My lamb shoulder with vegetable stew didn’t come after more than an hour. In fairness, the manager apologised but blamed that they only have 2 chiefs to take care full house diners. Taking the food, tender, juicy lamb shoulder was served in a hot stone pot with potatoes and a handful of sweet peppers. I had a peach beer which was really fizzy and fruity yet nothing like proper beer, a good girl’s drink.

On the whole, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening. However, I wasn’t expecting to wait for such a long time for my food.

We had a large group dinner on 24 Apr. It was my first time to dine in this restaurant. Before that night, some of my friends told me the food at Ivan was pretty good, and that was why I did have quite an expectation on the quality of the dishes.

I shared dinner with 2 other friends. In total we ordered 3 appetizers, 3 Bortsch and 3 main dishes. In general, the food was not bad at Ivan, but some dishes were indeed not as good as I imagined.

The 3 appetizers we ordered were Zakuska Po-Suzdalsky, Gribi V Smetane and Ribnaya Zakuska. The first one was actually ox tongue baked with cheese. I do think this is the best appetizer among all 3 of them. It was served in a small pot. The appearance may look ordinary but the taste is very rich. All the ox tongue slices were soaked in the liquid cheese. Though the cheese is all over the slices, the taste of ox still remained and the dish was not greasy. The 2 ingredients were a really good match.

Gribi V Smetane was baked mushrooms. The only special thing of the dish is that it is served with some slices of deep-fried bread. You can put the mushroom on it. The way to eat was special enough, but the taste was too ordinary to be impressed. It tasted like any other mushrooms you can find in any little mickey-mouse-restaurant or even in cans. Ribnaya Zakuska was a Russian style sashimi compilation. The sashimi were fresh, and the dished was served with the best appearance comparing to the other 2. Nothing too special about it.

The Bortsch we had was claimed and supposed to be the genuine Russian Bortsch. It was served with some sour cream. The soup smelt very nice, with all the ingredients. You could comfortably expect to have a strong-flavor soup simply based on the smell. If you are thinking in this way, you will find the taste a great great surprise. It was pretty blend, despite the fact that there were indeed lots of veggies in the soup. They were rather tasteless. I am not sure if this is how the genuine Bortsch taste, if so, I would say it is actually very different from the 'Westernized Mixed Veggie Soup' we usually have.

For the main dishes, we had Shshlik Iz Semgi, Chicken Kiev and Govyadina Stepnaya. The first one was simply fried Salmon in Russian style. Honestly, I failed to locate any difference, in taste or in appearance, had any difference with other fried Salmon fillet. But it tasted good, just lacking some features.

Chicken Kiev should be the champion among everything I had that night. It might look like any other Chicken Tempura. In fact, there was something special inside. The chicken fillet was stuffed with some cream and minced meat as I remember. The taste was good. Despite the deep-frying, the taste of chicken was still very rich. The texture was outstanding too. You have a crispy skin and a soft and juicy flesh underneath the chicken skin. This dish really worths a try.

The amosphere was one thing that I really liked about Ivan the Kozak. You can feel a very strong Russian feeling, from the decors to the video showing on the TV. Also, the place was not spacious, with tables packing together and guests sitting close to each other. In such a small area, the sense of enjoyment and happiness was very well spread and you would feel like home, or some village restaurant, where you can find nice people serving you.

I may have to take away the 'nice people serving you' from my compliments. The waitress served me was not in her best attitude. Perhaps the place was too crowded and she was extremely busy as every one was ordering. She kept on urging me to make orders, even if I was still thinking which dishes to choose. She did not give me time to breathe, it was too pushy. When the dishes came, she did not help us to place the dish nicely on the table, but simply gave me the dish and walked away. She did not take away the empty dishes neither, not until I used the dish to block her way to the kitchen.

The price of the dishes are not expensive actually. The bill was around 840 for the 3 of us. But is it worthwhile? That is a good question. I think Ivan the Kozak gives one of the best dining atmosphere and the most genuine Russian feeling, but some of the dishes may not be the best we can have with a loose budget on hand. Still, I believe it's worth a try.

I had dinner with my friends in Ivan The Kozak in Central on Apr.24th. It was really hard to find this tiny restaurant in the crowed central. But the atmosphere is quite good. The exotic decorations is very beautiful and interesting. Plus it is quiet in there.

I ordered a cup of Bussian tea and a roasted rabbit with pasta. The tea tasted like pepper mint mixed with Chinese Medicine. It is different but I don't think that worth HK$25. What annoyed me the most was that I waited for one hour and 40 minutes for the rabbit, because there was only two cooks working there, serving about 40 people at a time. No wonder dishes came very slow.

The rabbit was good. It was tender, creamy and quite tasty. It worths a try though it is HK$149 per serving. There is also a ice-room to store wines in the restaurant, but I didn't go there. Some of my friends who went there said that it was freezingly cold but the vodka was good. You can try that too.

All in all, it is an expensive restaurant, but if you really like Russian food and love comfortable atmosphere, you can have a try.

The atmosphere is quite good and warm there, the decoration is pretty nice!

The owner is friendly and the service is ok. But the food came really slow (maybe because there're a lot of people that night at the same time, around 40 of us went there together haha). But still, the restaurant is not really good at managing that kind of traffic~ I guess it'd be better for the normal days

I ordered Chicken Kiev, it came with a special "white sauce". The chicken is deep fried and kind of burnt on the surface. Inside, it's quite juicy but the chicken is quite tough. I don't think there's anything special about the dish. The sauce is so so. I think $129 is too expensive for a piece of deep fried chicken.

I had apple blinchiki for dessert ($35), nothing really special about it, it is like a small crepe with apple and cinnamon fillings, choc sauce on top, it's cold. I think it'd be good if it's warm and with more fillings......

Some of my friends ordered Bortch, and they said it's quite good~ (He thinks it's the best dish that night)

When it comes to Ukrainian and Russian cuisine, there are not too many to name. “Ivan the Kozak" is a restaurant serving this kind of cuisine. I dined there in April, 2010 and was impressed by the impeccable service and atmosphere.

A wide range of the choice of food is available, with some traditional Russian cuisine. I ordered the main course Grilled Baby Chicken w/ Homemade Tomato Sauce and Raspberry Sparkling Juice. The chicken was served with mixed vegetables and the size of the dish was appropriate. Indeed, the baby chicken was overcooked and was a little bit tough, but the tomato sauce was rich and sweet. The juice was okay, not too sweet.

What’s more, the owner Ivan was very enthusiastic and hospitable, he did chat with us and invite us to visit the “Vodka Snow Room” for free, which is a cold room with -1x Degree Celsius. Furs are provided, but we choose not to. We were really freezing inside! Ivan introduced us a huge range of Russia-imported vodkas. We did try three shots of vodkas, the pure one and some with flavor. They were pretty smooth and easy to drink even the shots contain 40% alcohol.

The atmosphere and the interior design were pleasant, with all finely crafted dining utensils. Colorful paintings were hung on the wall. You can truly feel the artistic culture! But I didn’t expect the chairs to be so packed.

The price seems to be pretty fair for a meal in Central. It’s worth a try!

There is music on the air and the light was dim enough to make a comfortable atmosphere. The size of the restaurant is a bit tiny, if you like a spacing eating environment, Ivan in Crossack may not satisfy you.

As the salad, soup and the desserts are quite expensive, around $120 per dish, so we ordered 5 dishes and shared with my friends. The food is cooked by a Russian chef. The juicy roasted fish with the rich cheese sauce really taste good, the combination is really tasty. Apart from the roasted fish, the other dishes have no much difference with the Chinese food. I also ordered the cherry favor fruit beer, it taste normal, if you like alcohol and you should not be interested in the fruit beer.

The services are quite good. The restaurant owner’s daughter is also work in the restaurant. She is a Russian but she is fluent in Chinese. They are very kind and patient to wait for the order and give us some good suggestion. Although the price is high, but the roasted fish and the nice is worth taking away $150 from your pocket.

On 24/4, my friends and I went there to have our dinner.
The food was truly authentic, most of the dishes I’d never heard about before. Bortch tasted very different from borsch in Hong Kong style café.
The taste was not bad at all. Zakuska Po-Suzdalsky was rich. But I had to admit that it was quite disappearing, since we all expected those authentic dishes would give a lot of surprise to us. Govyadina stepnaya was a bit tough.

But the service was good indeed! The boss was talkative and full of passion, and very nice of course. He shared his knowledge about vodka with us in the ice room.

On the whole, if you want to try some traditional Russian food, it is definitely a good place for you. Although the meal was quite expensive, it was worth trying.