Bell’s Market

What to Buy at Bell’s Market, the Russian Grocery Store in the Northeast | Eater Philly

"Located on Bustleton Avenue in the Northeast corner of Philly, Bell’s Market is a European grocery where I find hard-to-get foods that keep customers coming back: fresh-baked bread from the in-house bakery (lavash, authentic rye, several multigrain loaves), 44 different cakes (including a delicious riznik royal cake with four layers of sour cream, cocoa, poppy seeds, and toasted walnuts), and a wide prepared-foods counter offering cold salads (mushroom, pickled beets, cabbage, pasta, veggies) and hot dishes (chicken kiev, blintzes, several kinds of latkes, cabbage rolls, Turkish rice); the breaded cooked fish filets are an easy microwave-ready option and the layered khachapuri puff pastries come filled with ground beef and mushrooms or spinach and feta. The aisles blend supermarket staples with Eastern imports—bags of buckwheat, Ukrainian butter and Vologodskoe butter, chocolate-covered wafer cookies, spiral marshmallows from Lithuania, jars of bright red pickled tomatoes, antonovka apples and galia melons—and specialty items such as baked paltus (Russian halibut), kievski cake, Albanian cow cheese and Rizinski sheep cheese, plus eight kinds of feta in the dairy case. Jams labeled in Cyrillic (plum, grapefruit, white cherry, chokeberry, sour cherry, lemon), nine types of halvah, a tempting hard-candy kiosk (coffee, strawberry, eucalyptus, Pomawka chocolates at $3.99 a pound), and a huge refrigerated case of herring and lox (Acme, Haifa, Kaija; herring in cream sauce, in olive oil, without salt, plus ivasi white fish, forelka trout and several smoked salmons) reinforce the store’s emphasis on Russia, Ukraine, Turkey, Israel and Kazakhstan. I noticed the staff are described as friendly and helpful, manager Natasha Osadchaya says they’ll special-order nostalgic items customers request, and customers often tell staff they travel hours—from New Jersey, Bucks County and beyond—to shop here for a taste of home." - Ellen Scolnic