In the Richmond, a bounty of Russian food and community
Food // Restaurants
By Anna Roth Dec. 29, 2016 Updated: Dec. 29, 2016 5:28 p.m.
A plate of dumplings, known as pelmeni, which is a traditional Russian dish with asian influences, is seen at Cinderella Bakery, in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016.
Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
Mike Fishman arrives at the table with a bowl piled high with pelmeni. These juicy, pork-filled Russian dumplings fall somewhere between a wonton and tortellini; you eat them either in broth or dipped in white vinegar or sour cream. Here, at the Inner Richmond's Cinderella Bakery, they're worthy rivals to the famous xiao long bao at Shanghai Dumpling King a few dozen avenues west.
The pelmeni join a table already laden with other Russian foods. There are zakuski, "little snacks" such as salt-cured cucumbers and fermented tomatoes, meant to whet the appetite while drinking. There are beet-red bowls of warm borscht anointed with a dollop of sour cream; thin, crepe-like blini smeared thickly with sour cream and fish eggs; and baked piroshki, shiny with egg wash and bursting with fillings of mushrooms, caramelized onions and shredded cabbage.
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Everything is washed down with glasses of kvass, a sweet, mildly alcoholic beverage made from fermented dark bread, kombucha-like in its flavor and effervescence.
This would be an epic meal in many circumstances, but today, it's just lunch. "This is a typical Russian meal," says restaurateur Boris Nemchenok, 36, who is showing me around the neighborhood. "It was always hard as a kid growing up and staying overnight at my American friends' houses. Breakfast would be, like, scrambled eggs. And I'd be used to a feast."
After his family immigrated from the Soviet Union in 1982 when he was three years old, Nemchenok grew up in the Russian community that still thrives in the Richmond District. Now he's a managing partner and director of operations at the Italian restaurant Fiorella, which opened last year on Clement Street not far from where he went to grade school. His family still lives in the Avenues, though now across the park in the Sunset. Cinderella Bakery's Fishman, another Russian émigré, is Nemchenok's cousin by marriage.
Russians have been in San Francisco since before the Gold Rush — those early explorers, fur traders, merchants and holdouts from the North Coast's Fort Ross were buried in a small cemetery on what's now named Russian Hill. But the community swelled in the 20th century as waves of Russians immigrated to the United States in the wake of the political upheavals of the Bolshevik Revolution, World War II, perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Many went to New York, but some landed in San Francisco on recommendations from friends and family members who had already made the journey.
Uria Av prepares beef and cheddar piroshki at Cinderella Bakery, in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016.
They're still following those well-worn trails today. In the Richmond, Russian immigrants old and new still shop in their community's stores, attend the Orthodox churches and Jewish temples, and eat in the restaurants that remain.
You can put together a makeshift feast from the a la carte menus at places like Cinderella, Red Tavern and Katia's Russian Tea Room — though Katia Troosh, who operates her namesake restaurant, hints that retirement may be close. In that scenario, the city would lose one of its most reliable sources for blini, pelmeni and lavish Russian desserts.
At Cinderella Bakery, zakuski are little snacks, like fermented tomatoes and pickled vegetables, that are meant to whet the appetite while drinking
At these restaurants, the real action is often in back banquet rooms, where a mostly Russian crowd gathers for meals that span several courses and hours. "Russians love banquets. They all want to eat family-style like the Chinese or the Italians," says Irina Litvak, who co-owns Red Tavern and immigrated from Russia herself in 1988. "It's very much a traditional Russian thing to eat while you sit at the table and talk and talk and talk."
All the usual suspects are present on these tables: pelmeni, piroshki, smoked fish, pickled vegetables and herring with onions, all consumed with wine, vodka or Russian beer. At $45 to $65 per person, the feasts are not an everyday indulgence, but they're more affordable than most prix-fixe menus around town, and can be a nice break from the self-seriousness that so often accompanies farm-to-table dining.
These pickles and cabbage dishes, especially the ones that came out of the Soviet years, can initially strike you as examples of a cuisine born of poverty and an unforgiving climate. But as you look deeper, you start to see the fingerprints of Russia's neighbors. Dumplings like pelmeni speak to the Asian influences, while dishes like shashlik, a take on shish kebab, comes from neighbors on the Middle Eastern side.
Boris Nemchenok, an owner at Fiorella restaurant, digs into shashlik, a traditional Russian skewered meat dish.
Some of the best shashlik, Nemchenok says, is at Royal Market on Geary and 18th Avenue, a wonderful Russian-Armenian market stocked with all manner of tinned sturgeon, thick Russian yogurt, frozen pelmeni, tubs of red caviar, three-ounce jugs of kvass and the only beverage case I've ever seen devoted to vodka.
While I browse the aisles, Nemchenok orders at the deli case in Russian, and we walk away with pork, chicken and lamb shashlik, hunks of marinated meat. We also try a trio of popular Russian salads: traditional dill-heavy potato, sesame seed-flecked seaweed and Korean-inflected carrot and raisin.
It's time for our last stop of the day: Nemchenok's mother's house in the Inner Sunset for a Russian tea ceremony, another important, feast-like ritual. When we arrive, Frina Nemchenok has laid out a beautiful, elaborate table with traditional homemade pastries, led by Napoleon, a dreamy cake layering cream and flaky pastry (Boris Nemchenok's birthday request for most of his childhood). There is also apple pirog, a sweet cake with apple slices baked into it, and vatrushka, a sheet of baked cottage cheese with a whisper of lemon zest.
1of22Frina Nemchenok (left) eating and laughing in her home in San Francisco.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
2of22Traditional Russian desserts including a napoleon cake (left), cottage cheese cake (top) and apple pie (center, right) are seen on the dining room table of Frina Nemchenok, in her home in San Francisco.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
3of22Traditional Russian desserts include a Napoleon cake.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
4of22Frina Nemchenok (left) serves her granddaughter Annabelle Shapiro traditional Russian desserts in her San Francisco home.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
5of22Freshly baked cottage cheese cake, a traditional Russian dessert, in the home of Frina Nemchenok.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
6of22Traditional Russian tea is poured during dessert at the home of Frina Nemchenok in San Francisco.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
7of22Uria Av prepares beef and cheddar piroshki at Cinderella Bakery.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
8of22A plate of vegetable piroshki at Cinderella Bakery in San Francisco.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
9of22Boris Nemchenok (left) grew up in the Russian community that still thrives in the Richmond District. Here, he shares a toast with friends at his Italian restaurant, Fiorella.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
10of22A plate of halodez, which is a traditional Russian meat dish, at Cinderella Bakery.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
11of22A plate of beef and cheddar stuffed buns, known as piroshki, at Cinderella Bakery.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
12of22A traditional Russian seaweed dish.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
13of22Boris Nemchenok, an owner at Fiorella restaurant, orders traditional Russian food while shopping at the grocery store Royal Market and Bakery, in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
14of22Mike Rodems (left) and Claudia Rodems (right) dine at Cinderella Bakery and Cafe.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
15of22The Holy Virgin Cathedral on Geary Street.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
16of22The Holy Virgin Cathedral is on Geary Street.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
17of22At Cinderella Bakery, zakuski are little snacks, like fermented tomatoes, that are meant to whet the appetite while drinkingPhoto: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
18of22Boris Nemchenok, an owner at Fiorella restaurant, digs into shashlik, a traditional Russian skewered meat dish, in San Francisco, California, on Tuesday, Oct. 18, 2016.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
19of22Traditional Russian desserts including a napoleon cake (bottom), cottage cheese cake (left) and apple cake (center,top) are seen on the dining room table of Frina Nemchenok.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
20of22A woman walks past Katia's Russian Tea Room on 5th Avenue and Balboa Street.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
21of22Frina Nemchenok cuts into a Napoleon cake.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
22of22Borscht, a traditional Russian soup made with beets and vegetables, is seen at Cinderella Bakery.Photo: Gabrielle Lurie, The Chronicle
We drink strong Russian tea out of glass teacups that sit in intricate metal holders, similar to the ones the Nemchenok family left behind in the Soviet Union — they were only allowed four suitcases between them, and had to leave most valuables behind. Frina also serves housemade sour-plum and strawberry preserves in little saucers. The jam doesn't go in the tea or on the cakes. You sip the tea, then take a nip from a small spoon, she explains. They work together so well that you wonder why this tradition hasn't made its way out of Russia.
Frina's story is like those of most immigrants: At first she was taken aback by the abundance of America, especially at the supermarket, where you could not only buy chicken at any time of day but also buy individually wrapped pieces of it. And then there was a certain dessert America does best. "We never saw so much ice cream," she says. "From the beginning, we were buying this ice cream like crazy."
It took her a while to get used to San Francisco's relatively empty streets, as well as to American culinary innovations that didn't go over so well, like Wonderbread and pasteurized milk, which she found difficult to turn into yogurt. Frina had been a food chemist in the Soviet Union but had to work behind the counter in a Russian food shop for a few years in S.F. before landing a job as a food chemist at Guittard, from which she just retired last year.
In many ways, her son's story follows the second-generation immigrant experience, too. He grew up speaking Russian as well as English, but doesn't have a trace of his mother's accent. As he's gotten older, he's moved away from the neighborhood (albeit not far, to Potrero Hill). And he says that rising housing costs have caused the same shift with most of his generation. "Most people my age stuck around the Bay Area but moved away from the Richmond," he says.
One day, he hopes to maybe open a Russian restaurant, but for now, it's Italian, following a business model that proved successful at his other restaurant, Uva Enoteca in the Lower Haight. With its thin-crust pizza and hip wallpaper depicting Bay Area figures like Alice Waters and E-40, the buzzy Fiorella is an example of the new Richmond District, where the average home price is $1.5 million and more upscale businesses are moving in to cater to that clientele.
Nemchenok is grateful to be a bridge between new and old worlds.
"This is where I grew up, this is where I went to school, where I did it all. I wanted to bring something to the neighborhood that served me so well," he says. "And it's nice to see my mom's friends randomly walking down Clement Street. It's nice to say hi."
Anna Roth is a freelance writer. Email: food@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annaroth
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