Taste of Russia isn’t so Russian
The cuisine of the former Soviet Union hasn’t had much luck in Kansas City. The last Russian restaurant in town was a little dining room and dance club in a Prairie Village shopping strip called Moscow Nights. That place came and went about a decade ago, though it had a hot minute of popularity. It was owned by a man named Vladimir — simply Vladimir, since he never gave me his last name. Vladimir also ran the tiny Russian market at 7228 West 79th Street in downtown Overland Park, with his in-laws, Alex and Anna Kucherovsky, natives of Kiev.
Ten years ago, when I poked around Taste of Moscow, looking at the array of imported wares, I wrote:
“The shop really looks like an Eastern European food market with its open baskets of nuts, cans of tinned fish, blue plastic bottles of Russian soda water, a single hanging salami, Russian newspapers and videos and one refrigerator case filled with boxed, decorated cakes from a Brooklyn bakery, another with frozen blintzes from New Jersey…”
The store still sells frozen blintzes, but the flavor of the shop has definitely changed since the new owners — Egyptian-born Ahmed Hassan and his wife, Hanan — purchased the store nine years ago.
