Купцов Елисеевых

I've mentioned this store before, but I've decided that it deserves an entire blog post all to itself. The name of the store is Купцов Елисеевых (Kupetz Eliseevs), and it is so conveniently located that I don't even have to walk for a full five minutes to get there. My friend Оля, from Moscow, introduced me to the shop on my first weekend in St. Petersburg, and I have made several return trips in the weeks since.

The store sells nothing but delicious edible goodies. Imagine a store that combines Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory, a miniature version of Hammond's Candies, a small sit-down restauraunt, a gourmet meat and cheese shop, a bakery, and a pastry shop all in one, and which also happens to have a giant pineapple and a piano that plays itself located right in the middle of all of this. That's what this store is like.

They sell countless flavors of eclairs and cakes, all beautifully decorated with colorful frosting, sugar flowers, and thin squares of chocolate with the shop's logo printed on them in edible ink. 

Some of the eclairs are topped entirely by a chocolate oval with a beautiful scene printed on it; the purpose of the frosting beneath it is simply to hold the sheet of chocolate in place.

Then there are the macaroons, which come in even more flavors than the eclairs and cakes. You can buy little ones by themselves or in boxes of seven, ten, or more. The price per little macaroon decreases when you buy them in larger packages (always an excellent justification for buying more). 

Here is a lone apricot-flavored macaroon, separated from it's fellow macaroon friends and about to meet it's demise... (I ate it about five seconds after this picture was taken).

You can also buy a Macaroon DeLux, which is at least as big as four little macaroons and is somehow even more delicious, a difficult task because the little macaroons are already so good. I think that the macaroon getting bigger causes an increase on the frosting side of the frosting-to-shell ratio, the result of which is absolutely fantastic.

Next are cupcakes, sweet breads, cookies, muffins... and thus far I've still only talked about one of the half-dozen counters in the store.

The chocolate and candy counter is absolutely gorgeous, yet somehow I don't have a picture. There are piles of chocolates and bowls of chocolate-covered almonds, some dusted in gold or silver, squares of nougat with nuts and dried fruits inside them, and marzipan fruits that are like miniature works of art. The bakery has breads and croissants, the cheese counter has enough varieties of fine cheeses to make anybody who even remotely likes cheese hungry, and there are freestanding displays with packaged candies, chocolate bars, and jams.

The store, however, is notable not only for how absolutely fantastic the food is. It is a historical establishment, having been around since 1902, and is also known for how beautiful the inside and the outside of the building are. The inner hall is at least two stories tall and much of the wall space is taken up by windows and mirrors. 

The perimeter of the hall is lined with the multitude of different counters, each with their own cash register. In the center of the hall is the restaurant area, with the giant pineapple right in the middle of the seats and the piano that plays itself just a bit off to the side.

The outside of the store is ornately decorated, with intricate, three-dimensional borders around all of the windows. The windows in the front of the building are full of wooden dolls, all of which are in constant motion. Each one is holding or eating some delicious food like the foods that you can buy inside the store.

The building looks especially beautiful when it is lit up at night, which is one of the reasons that I love to go there in the evening.

The other reason that I like going in the evenings is that all of the foods that must be made and sold on the same day are half-price after eight o'clock. This includes the breads, rolls, croissants, muffins, eclairs, cakes, and giant macaroons. 

On Saturday evenings, I usually finish rehearsal at eight. Tired and hungry, I often find a myself a few tired and hungry friends and together we go waltzing over to Kupetz Eliseevs to get ourselves some half-price, full-deliciousness goodies.

Yum.