Cinderella Bakery has been keeping the Inner Richmond stocked with Russian pastries and Eastern European fare for more than 70 years. It’s a community staple for stuffed piroshkis, blinchikis (Russian-style blintzes), and a whole universe of cookies, cakes, and sweet rolls—especially around holidays like Purim, when the bejeweled hamentashen fly off the shelves.
But Mike Fishman, who took over ownership of the historic bakery in 2008 along with his wife Marika Fishman, never wanted Cinderella to be just a “one-man shop.”
“I always wanted to try and expand,” he says.
Inside the new Cinderella Russian Bakery & Café on 24th Street in the Mission(Nicola Parisi)
If things had gone to plan, they already would have: The Fishmans actually bought this building on 24th Street—the former home of historic Mexican bakery La Victoria, which first opened its own doors around the same time Cinderella did across town—back in 2018. It’s taken eight years to navigate turbulent waters churned up by a variety of circumstances to get to this point (not the least of which was the pandemic and its consequences on the restaurant industry).
Good things, though, are worth the wait. By the time Cinderella Russian Bakery & Café opened its second-ever location late last month, the shop and the community were ready to embrace one another with open arms.
For the Fishmans, that meant honoring the legacy of La Victoria and the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District of which they were now a part. They commissioned local arts organization Precita Eyes to install a vibrant, 12-foot-tall mural that portrayed traditional Russian matryoshka dolls—Cinderella’s logo—alongside versions encoded with details commonly associated with Mexican heritage. Inside, a gallery of historic photos from La Victoria Bakery is displayed alongside vintage matryoshkas and handpainted traditional Russian folk characters.
The mural at Cinderella's Mission location was made by artists collaborating with Precita Eyes and has both Russian and Mexian elements.(Nicola Parisi)
“Food, family, and culture in both Jewish communities and Latino communities bring everything together,” says Mike.
For longtime neighbors that may have had little exposure to Russian pastries, Cinderella’s fried and baked shoeprint-shaped piroshkis with fillings like beef and cheddar are a familiar, empanada-like entry point. Toothsome inside their soft, airy pockets of bread, they’re just one of the things Marika Fishman says are a “must try.”
She fills up a box for me with several others, extra generous with the hamentashen after I tell her they are my favorite thing at the original location. Cinderella makes them in six flavors including apricot, raspberry, and apple cinnamon. But it’s the poppyseed—with lightly sweetened seed jam inside a buttery, crumbly, three-cornered-hat of a cookie—that keeps me coming back every March.
“A lot of people don’t know that we make hamentashen all year round, not just at Purim,” Marika says. As one of those people, I make a mental note.
The traditional honey cake (medovik) may be what Cinderella is best known for, which alternates thin, delicate layers of caramelized cake with a frosting made of condensed milk. Silky with warm, nutty notes, the honey gives the cake an almost floral complexity that keeps it from veering into the territory of the overly sweet.
The layered honey cake medovik is one of the most popular pastries at Cinderella.(Nicola Parisi)
Everything is made from scratch at Cinderella and, in their 24th Street location, they have far more room in the kitchen to churn out larger quantities of cookies and breads. The café’s interior is also a significant departure from the original, which essentially has no inside seating. Here, there is plenty of it at the front and back of the shop, with a prettily tiled open pastry counter in between, along with several tables outside.
While the original location has entrees like beef stroganoff and chicken a la Kiev, their opening hours have historically prevented the café from having much of a dinner crowd (who wants to eat outside in the Richmond after the fog rolls in, anyway?) In the Mission, where Cinderella doesn’t close until 8pm, there’s ample opportunity to welcome one. Day or night, soups—especially Babushka’s Chicken Soup and the borsch made with beets, cabbage, and potatoes—are among the menu's most popular items.
Though they’ve “hardly had a chance to come up for air” since opening three weeks ago, says Mike, they’re already noticing the familiar faces of repeat customers. While the neighborhood may always have a La Victoria-sized hole in its heart, Cinderella’s poppyseed rolls and cheese-filled vareniki are helping to fill it back up again.
// Cinderella Russian Bakery & Café is open daily from 8am to 8pm; 2937 24th St. (Mission), cinderellabakery.com
Babushka's chicken soup, borsch, and other dishes from Cinderella Russian Bakery & Café(Nicola Parisi)
