The YatsoshnaOne might ask why you'd patronize a restaurant where you have to prepare your own food. Well, to begin with, you don't really have to do all the work. The food is already cut up and the batter mixed for you, and you don't have to clean up. Also, many Kadanë believe that it just isn't possible to make good yatsosh at home, that chefs have access to special ingredients that the average home cook just can't find. The various sauces that are included at the table are often specialties of the house and their recipes fiercely guarded secrets. Another reason might be that what we see here is the prelude to a night of drinking (or, judging from the suggestion of combining all the batter, the night of drinking may have already begun).The yatsosh is considered an excellent "drinking" food, and is a staple at Kadanë bars (dyuna). Kadanë bars are usually all-male establishments, at least in the later hours of the evening. Any woman doing serious drinking at a typical bar late at night is considered to be the kind who doesn't wear a swasho under her thaskritl. Consequently, many yatsoshna have become de facto "women's bars": a safe place to kick back with your girlfriends without any annoying sexual overtones. The typical yatsoshna by day and into the early evening is an innocuous place, suitable for the innocent like children or foreigners, but as the night wears on, most become increasingly devoted to groups of female drinkers. The restaurants often continue to provide yatsosh batter and (cheap and skimpy) filling ingredients for free throughout the night to those who continue to buy refills of gratma and other potables. You do occasionally see men, singly or in small groups, in such yatsoshna. They are there not for the drinking or the camaraderie that is the norm at a male dyuna, but to pick up women. The men who frequent such places are considered to be more sensitive and serious that the average, more interested in a relationship than a one-night stand. This may or may not be true. |
© 2003, Terrence Donnelly