The Russia House

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday May 29, 2007

Helen Greenwood

A Bondi deli filled to the rafters with unusual delicacies has more than the usual fare for a gourmet dinner.

Despite the name, Michael Goloff's business Russkis is not just a Russian deli. Sure, you can get six types of piroshki and the fermented milk drink, kefir. Yes, you'll find Georgian-style plum sauce and Kiev cake and Ukrainian kasza or buckwheat. And there are a dozen brands of pickled cucumbers.

But for the food lover, there's much more. Fromage frais, for instance, in little tubs in the dairy cabinet just below the quark and the sour cream that has 25 per cent fat instead of the supermarket options of 18 per cent (light) and 35 per cent (regular). "It's to our taste," Goloff says.

Then there are Schultz bacon, three types of salmon caviar (Russian, Norwegian and Australian) and Swedish, German and American-style herrings. You'll find imported hot- and cold-smoked mackerel as well as cold-smoked rainbow trout from Victoria and cold-smoked ocean trout from Tasmania. Side by side are mustard oil and sunflower oil, buckwheat and couscous, Bronte Bakery sourdough and Borodinsky's rye bread. About the only thing you won't find at Russkis is a plain white loaf.

Goloff has had a deli on this busy Bondi Road strip since 1980 and moved into these premises in 1999. Since then, he has been tinkering and renovating, most recently adding more refrigerated cabinets. The 20 or so dumplings - pelmeni with the raw fillings and vareniki with the cooked fillings - have their own freezer.

But the glory of the shop is the huge counter of smallgoods. Coils of fleischwurst (sometimes labelled "flushwurst") and strings of frankfurters, pork loins and Polish sausages and hams. The weselna (wedding sausage) and krakovskaya (smoked sausage) and krestianskaya (country sausage) and Italian salami are all cut on the diagonal, presenting an attractive face to customers.

In the next counter are tubs of dips and salads (herring, potato, beetroot, liptauer, carrot, taramasalata - "you won't taste anything like this one," Goloff says). There are olives and cottage cheeses, cabbage rolls and chicken liver pate and rolls of eggplant delight with walnuts and herbs.

The shop displays an old-fashioned penchant for confectionery, from handmade lollies to chocolate-coated plums.

And everywhere, there are packs and bottles of juices imported by Russkis: blackcurrant, blood orange, sour cherry, rosehip, red grapefruit and, the latest craze, pomegranate. The Buzy Bakehouse in Woollahra is turning Russkis' Yan pomegranate juice into a popular sorbet.

Russkis

131 Bondi Road, Bondi, 9387 6313.

Seven days, 9am-7pm (Thu-Fri, 8pm).Best buys

Veal fleischwurst (above), $17.99/kg

Siberian (veal and pork) pelmeni, $20/kg

Yan pomegranate juice, $7.99/930ml

In the neighbourhood

Great noshing and shopping on Bondi Road:Paris Patisserie Francaise (9387 2496); Sam the Butcher (9389 1420), Wellington Cake Shop (9389 4555), The One That Got Away seafood deli (9389 4227), Glick's Cakes and Bagels (9386 9949), Krinsky's Kosher Foods (9386 9021) and the Health Emporium (9365 6008).