From Russia with lovely food

Diners craving Russian cuisine don't have many restaurant choices in the Bay State.

Fortunately for these foodies, there's Cafe St. Petersburg. Located in Newton Centre, this elegant establishment features such classics as caviar, sturgeon, borscht and duck.

The menu also showcases such Russian dishes as Siberian pelimeni, which we all know as Russian-style meat ravioli, and solianka, a soup comprising at least 15 varieties of julienned meats, vegetables, capers and spices. In the beverage department, the restaurant's Tchaikovsky bar pours its house specialty - cranberry vodka.

Cafe St. Petersburg's signature dish, meanwhile, is its Blini Imperial - an assortment of smoked salmon, salmon caviar and osetra caviar.

Don't expect to find too many of these dishes at your neighborhood fast-food joint.

Authentic food, however, provides just one of the pleasurable aspects of Cafe St. Petersburg. The eatery comes stocked with Old World charm, as visitors to its traditional dining room will attest. The staff is attired in formal wear and the ceramic artwork that lines the dining room adds another classy touch.

Another noteworthy trait, so to speak, is the restaurant's Wednesday night concert featuring classical pianists Jakov Jakoulov and Igor Tkachenko. The dueling dynamos perform with improvisational virtuosity on opposing baby grand pianos.

"The classical Russian experience that we offer, from the food and drinks to the artwork to the concerts, cannot be found anywhere else in this region, perhaps not anywhere outside of Russia," says Natan Slezinger, who owns and operates Cafe St. Petersburg with his wife Ludmila.

The Slezingers opened their restaurant in Brookline in 1993. "Everybody told my mom how great her food was," says Galina Slezinger, a manager at Cafe St. Petersburg, in explaining how the eatery came into existence. "She cooked like this at home."

Ludmila learned many of her specialties from her mother-in-law, Galina Zelenskaya, said Galina Slezinger, who was named after her late grandmother.

The restaurant was "a great success" in Brookline but space was limited - 40 seats maximum and "that was pushing it," says Slezinger. "People demanded a bigger place."

Such a place was found two years ago in Newton Centre on the ground floor of 57 Union St., where the main dining room now seats 50 and a function room for private parties seats another 50.

Though off the beaten path, Cafe St. Petersburg has attracted its regular customers from Brookline as well as new ones, according to Slezinger. The reason for the restaurant's popularity is simple, she says. "We serve really fresh food and it's cooked with care," she says. "That's how homemade food is usually cooked."

Cafe St. Petersburg is open Tuesday through Thursday, from noon to 11 p.m., and Friday through Sunday, noon to midnight. Lunch is served Tuesday through Friday from noon to 3 p.m. The restaurant is closed Mondays.

For lunch, appetizers include chopped herring, pate, Georgian eggplant and marinated mushrooms, with prices ranging from $4.75 to $6.50. Soups, including borscht, cabbage soup and wild mushroom soup, range in price from $3.50 to $4.50. Salads cost from $4.25 for a garden salad to $8.50 for a spinach salad with salmon or shrimp. Entrees include chicken schnitzel, "sirniki" cheese latkes, beef stroganoff, stuffed cabbage and Russian fish, with prices ranging from $5.50 to $9.95.

For dinner, fish appetizers include Norwegian salmon and Russian herring. Vegetable appetizers include pickled oyster mushrooms and meat appetizers include chicken roulette. Hot appetizers include potato cutlets. Prices range from $4.95 to $9.50.

Soups and salads range in price from $4.25 to $8.95.

Entrees include chicken Kiev, leg of lamb, trout, sturgeon steak and baked salmon with prices ranging from $12.95 to $20.95. The Blini Imperial for two costs $69.95.

Desserts include blintzes, compotes and kissel with prices ranging from $2.95 to $9.95. The restaurant also offers Russian cake and St. Petersburg tea for two - a traditional Russian tea served with the preserve of the day, lemon and wafers for $6.50.

The restaurant also has a fixed-price banquet menu.

The Wednesday night concert typically starts at 8 p.m. Call in advance for a schedule. Admission is $15. Live classical music is performed free of charge every night but Tuesday.

Reservations for dinner and the concert are recommended.

The restaurant's Web site is www.cafestpetersburg.com.

Contact Bob Tremblay at 508-626-4409 or btremblay@cnc.com.