Soviet Fast-Food Eatery Slow to Catch On in U.S.

Americans have said nyet to the nation’s first Soviet fast-food restaurant, but its owners still believe that the eatery can make it in a more ethnically diverse East Coast city.

The Piroshki Restaurant opened last spring in Norfolk with great expectations and talk of international cooperation. After a brief spurt of interest in the Soviet-American venture, however, business dropped off.

“The American people are very conservative in general,” said Mark Aynbinder, a Soviet immigrant and part owner of the eatery. “We will develop something to adjust the piroshki to American taste.”

The Piroshki Restaurant was named after is a fried pastry filled with meat and vegetables that sold for less than a dollar.

Unlike the McDonald’s that recently opened in Moscow, there were no long lines at Piroshki.

At its peak, 700 to 800 piroshkis were sold in a day. The business served other foods, including a Soviet doughnut, but most days fewer than 100 customers visited its counters.

Equipment from the shop was auctioned off last week at the city’s Waterside Marketplace, where Piroshki opened last April.

The owners are making plans to move the business elsewhere along the East Coast, possibly Baltimore or New York. They believe the ethnic mix of larger metropolitan areas could make the business a success.

“The ethnic mix of the metropolitan areas of the Northeast are more likely to accept the piroshki than the areas like Norfolk, where we do not have Slovak descendants,” said Sam Werbel, a Piroshki vice president.