🎵 Come on down to Cleveland-town everyone 🎵
As prices for gas, flights, food, and, well, everything else in the world soar, there are few better vacation options for the cash-strapped American than coming to Cleveland and eating pierogies.
So says the New York Times this week in a piece on summer travel in the era of inflation.
And the reasoning here has nothing to do with cultural attractions, nature, music or any of the other things that set the Butthole of the World apart from other cities — none of those features are even mentioned. No, the NYT knows the first and last thing anyone needs to know about Cleveland is that it’s comparitively cheap and you can get pierogies and doughy, Eastern European comfort food almost everywhere.
The safest way to explore Ukraine right now might be to eat in Cleveland, which has strong Eastern European roots and a concentration of Ukrainian shops and restaurants in suburban Parma.“You cannot have a restaurant in Cleveland and not have some sort of pierogi,” said Natasha Pogrebinskaya, a native of Ukraine and the chef at the South Side restaurant in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, singling out the dumpling that many Eastern European cultures claim (she recommends eating them the Ukrainian way, with sour cream and dill).
“Many restaurants aren’t specifically Polish, Ukrainian or Hungarian, but they do Eastern European food,” said Susan Chapo, the owner of Relish Cleveland, which runs food tours. Her flagship tour visits the city’s West Side Market, opened in 1912, for pierogies, bratwurst, homemade ice cream and more ($71 a person for three hours).
“You can eat well here, cheaply,” she added.
That goes for lodgings too; an Airbnb condo near the market costs $97 a night.
Naturally, interested travelers planning 2023 trips should keep tabs on the dates for next year’s Cleveland Pierogi Week.
This article appears in May 18-31, 2022.
