Brighton Beach Sells This Salad by the Pound, but Mom Still Makes It From Scratch

Good food is worth a thousand words—sometimes more. In My Family Recipe, writers share the stories of dishes that are meaningful to them and their loved ones.

---

We’d gotten off the plane at JFK just a few hours prior. After a short drive in my uncle’s Honda Civic, we arrived in South Brooklyn. The street was lined with brown-brick buildings, and my aunt pointed up at one of them.

"Welcome home!"

The uniform seven-story structure seemed clean but lived-in, with a mirrored lobby featuring a beige leather sofa (that I later came to learn no one ever sat on). Quite snazzy, really. A stark contrast to the dilapidated Khrushchev-era homes back in Ukraine.

I was 9 years old. My mom, dad, sister, and I were at the tail end of our two-day immigration journey. My dad’s brother, who had crossed the Atlantic a decade earlier, was generous enough to rent us an apartment ahead of our arrival.

We all crowded inside. It smelled of fresh paint, and a gold light beamed through the windows. It was a standard-issue South Brooklyn one bedroom—but by the looks on my parents’ faces, it was as if we had won the lottery.

I headed for the kitchen first, while my parents and sister explored the two other rooms. It was narrow, with a sink and counter on one side, fridge and stove on the other, and brand-new cabinets above. Again, a stark contrast to our Odessa kitchen, which was also the foyer, and also the shower.

The fridge was mostly empty, except for one shelf with a grouping of items I could tell were intended to make us feel at home. A bag marked “Russian Bread,” a plastic bag with sliced kalbasa peeking out the sides of wax paper, and a quart container with a barcode sticker, which appeared to be filled with ... is that Salat Oliviye?

I’d seen nice kitchens in American movies, at least. But store-bought Oliviye?

Salat Oliviye, the famed Russian potato salad, was reportedly invented by a highbrow Belgian chef in Moscow named Olivier, using luxurious ingredients like caviar and veal tongue. As the recipe trickled down to home cooks in the 1900s, the ingredient list became considerably more accessible: potatoes, carrots, canned peas, and pickles. With each passing decade, families have adapted the formula to fit their own tastes, and the salad has been established as a celebratory staple ever since.

It's appeared on every festive table I’ve ever experienced—every birthday, every New Year’s Eve, every Easter. Although the ingredients were easily accessible, Oliviye was reserved for special occasions, its appearance symbolizing good times ahead. By no means is it meant to be the most delicious thing ever, but the tedious peeling and fine-dicing of each vegetable, hard-boiled egg, and pickle must contribute somehow to its exemplary taste—and certainly the satisfaction the cook has while eating it.

As a child looking at this alien tub of Oliviye, I struggled to understand why anyone would choose to buy this, fully knowing that the native supermarkets were lined with Pringles, Snickers, and Pepsi. Turned out, Russian food in plastic containers was our new normal.

We soon learned South Brooklyn was teeming with Russian markets, all trading in the same greatest hits of Soviet cuisine. Breaded cutlets, chicken Kiev, kebabs, stuffed cabbage, blintzes, aspics, black and red caviar, a rainbow of pickled vegetables, and countless iterations of mayo-dressed salatiki (little salads)—with Oliviye leading the pack. It also became obvious that this was how most Russian-Americans subsisted themselves.

One of the biggest tragedies of the post-Soviet immigrant experience is the loss of our traditional home cooking. A loss for the eaters, anyway. For the cooks, quite the opposite. The idea of “prepared foods,” let alone delivery, did not exist in the old country: If you wanted to eat, you had to cook.

These stores liberated people from their stoves. All the flavors of home were right there on Brighton Beach, conveniently sold by the pound. And the way people shop on Brighton week after week, you’d think they were preparing for an apocalypse. Visions of empty store shelves and bread lines are hard to forget—it’s as if they’re making up for hungrier times.

Sure, many Russian immigrants still cook, but not these special celebration foods like Oliviye. Why go through the trouble if we can buy it ready-made? This is America.

On Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay, you’re never further than a few blocks from any Soviet delicacy your heart may desire. Yet somehow, it’s never quite right. Sitting in those buffet trays, all those salads and blitzes and cutlets start to smell and taste like the same thing. They fill you up, but don’t satisfy.

For most of the 20 years I’ve lived in New York, I’ve avoided Brighton like the plague. The truth is, it makes me deeply sad. And it’s not the sub-par Oliviye that does me in.

I see the elderly immigrants, those who left everything behind in favor of starting over decades ago, going from Russian store to Russian store, straight clearing those shelves and hot buffets. What I see is an older generation trying to recapture a piece of their past lives through overconsumption of these now-abundant foods.

Every now and then my mom still makes her Oliviye. Except now she does it almost ironically, making sure to announce it with a little smirk, “I made Oliviye." Knowing very well she can buy it at the store down the block, choosing to make it from scratch makes it that much more special.

What store-bought dish does your family still love to make from scratch? Let us know in the comments.