Less than a mile from the CESJDS Upper School, a hidden gem gives visitors the feeling that they walked into a market straight from Russia. Matreshka is a small grocery store owned and operated by three generations of women from a family that moved to the D.C. area from Southern Russia in 2008. It features Russian-style food from countries including Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Georgia and Israel.
Matreshka is located behind the Exxon gas station at the corner of Rockville Pike and Nicholson Lane. I, like many other JDS students and faculty, have driven by every single day without noticing it, and am so glad that I finally decided to stop in.
The family has been running Matreshka since 2017, when they purchased the store from a previous owner. On a recent Saturday in March, the store was full of customers. Its popularity is attested to by numerous reviews on Google, many of which comment on the friendliness of the women who run the store. I was delighted to experience this friendliness firsthand.
The name of the store, Matreshka, means a set of wooden nesting dolls, a popular gift in Russian culture. These dolls typically include women of various sizes stacked one inside the other.
When explaining the name of the store to me, one owner and the grandmother of the three women, Nelli Bikritskaya, took a matreshka doll off the shelf behind the cash register and opened it up. She said that the doll represented the management of the store, as it is run by a grandmother her, a mother and a granddaughter.
“The store is driven by the family’s love of cooking,” manager Milana Lapshinskaya said. “Grandma’s a great cook, my mom is a great cook [and] I love to cook very much.”
One major attraction of the store is its bakery. The store owners take pride in baking on-site, where they bake goods including their breads, pelmeni dumplings, pierogies and baklava. The owners especially feel proud of their cheese pie.
“Everybody loves it,” Lapshinskaya said. “I haven’t seen a person who said ‘I don’t like that’.”
Many recipes, like the cheese pie, are inspired by what the family ate during their childhoods in Northern Ossetia-Alania, a province of Russia.
A large number of products have kosher certifications. Some of these products include halva, eggplant salad, bread, wine and pickles. Additionally, the store has several menorahs available for purchase.
Svetlanca Mayami, a Russian-American and regular customer of Matreshka, particularly enjoys the dark bread baked at the store. She is fond of using the store to introduce her friends to Russian culture.
“I actually brought a lot of my American friends here,” Mayami said. “…I encourage people to come and support this small business.”
Despite the store’s small size, it sells a wide variety of Russian packaged goods. There are dozens of options when it comes to candies, spices and herbal medicines. Additionally, an entire wall in the store features whole smoked fish.
According to Lapshinskaya, 90% of their customers are natives of countries all over the Russian-speaking world. This includes two countries at war with each other, Russia and Ukraine.
Lapshinskaya said that at the beginning of the Ukraine-Russia war, it was very hard for the store to import products. Wholesale prices became three times higher and shipments were delayed. Though wholesale prices have come down since then, they’re still higher than they were a few years ago. The store has nevertheless managed to keep its retail prices reasonable.
“So we get to the point where [we ask], should we stop cooking for a little bit and wait for everything to get normal, or should we just keep on going?,” Lapshinskaya said.
The family decided to keep on going despite these challenges. According to Lapshinskaya, even though their countries are at war, her Russian and Ukrainian customers always get along when they are in the store together.
“They’re good people, that’s it,” she said.
After enjoying the food and atmosphere at Matreshka, and feeling transported to another country, I can confidently recommend a visit to this small family-run Russian grocery store.
