Russian shops in Nice: addresses, hours, what they sell

Six of the shops line the L2 and L3 tram route, from Ani Mini Market on avenue de la Californie to Gastronomie Russe at 4-6 boulevard Gambetta, and none of them is more than half a kilometre from a stop. Further along the same boulevard Gambetta, at numbers 103 and 122-124, there are two more: Berezka and Mix Markt. In the centre, by the Jean Médecin and Gare Thiers stops, you’ll find Kalinka Plus and Tisa. Out east, between the port and Nice Riquier station, are Avrora Market, Nestinarka and the second Mix Markt.

Not many of them are purely Russian: Ararat is Armenian, Nestinarka Bulgarian, Tisa Romanian. But it was Nestinarka, as it happens, where we found tvorog (farmer’s cheese). Every address has been checked against the SIRENE business register, OpenStreetMap and the shops’ own pages, with the details at the bottom of this page.

Addresses, hours and phone numbers checked on 6 October 2026 against the French business register (SIRENE), OpenStreetMap and the shops' own pages. Small shops change their hours, so call before a long trip.

Don't go to these old addresses: Kazatchok (105 rue de Roquebillière), no shop at this address (business register and maps); Matriochka (10 boulevard du Tzarewitch), closed in 2016.

Where to buy tvorog, buckwheat and kefir in Nice

From what we know, tvorog is sold in two places: Ani Mini Market on avenue de la Californie, and Nestinarka on rue Smollett, which also has brynza (brined white cheese). There’s kefir at Ani Mini Market and at Gastronomie Russe on boulevard Gambetta, and Gastronomie Russe also has smetana (Russian sour cream) and smoked fish. For pelmeni (Russian dumplings), any of three will do: Ani Mini Market, Gastronomie Russe, or Avrora Market on rue Arson, which stays open until 22:30 even on public holidays.

We had less luck with buckwheat. We couldn’t confirm it in a single shop in Nice. That doesn’t mean it isn’t there, but phone before you set off. An ordinary supermarket will bail you out: look for sarrasin grillé or the word kasha on the packet, which is proper hulled, toasted buckwheat. Carrefour’s catalogue, for example, has a 750 g pack of Sarrasin Grillé Kasha from Jardin Bio. Plain sarrasin décortiqué without the word grillé is buckwheat too, just untoasted: Auchan has it under the Bio par Nature label.

Kefir goes by its own name in French supermarkets. Lactel bottles say Kéfir in big letters, and the line with the official product name usually reads Lait fermenté. You’ll find Lactel at both Auchan and Carrefour, and Auchan also does its own-brand kefir. One warning: kéfir de fruits and kéfir d’eau have nothing to do with kefir. They’re fizzy drinks with no milk.

Tvorog is trickier at the supermarket. The nearest equivalents are fromage blanc and faisselle, while Provençal brousse is only partly similar, because it’s made from whey.

If the nearest shop is a long way off

First, Nice itself. Ani Mini Market has an online shop: you can collect your order in store (Click & Collect) or have it delivered within Nice. At Avrora Market some products can be ordered on request.

We checked the shops in nearby towns too. Cannes has three (Kalinka Market, Moscow Market, Tatiana Epicerie Russe), Antibes two (Chez Masha and Moscow Market) and Toulon also two (Inter Market and Katuscha). Addresses and hours are in the tables of our main shop directory. Live in Beausoleil? According to the business register, the company that runs Gastronomie Russe has had a second shop there since 2014, at 2 rue du Marché. We haven’t checked its hours or phone number.

We checked the online shops on 6 October 2026, and the short version is this: chilled food gets shipped around France with caveats, and frozen food is harder still.

Katucha (katucha.fr, Metz) ships by Colissimo anywhere in France, up to 20 kg per order. Orders with fresh products only go out on a Monday or Tuesday, and the site says nothing about insulated packaging. Frozen goods aren’t shipped at all: pelmeni and vareniki (stuffed dumplings) can only be collected in Metz or delivered locally there. On the day we checked, the site had 15% tvorog (275 g) for €2.40, 2% kefir (1 kg) for €1.99 and whole buckwheat groats (yadritsa, 800 g) for €3.69. Delivery is priced by weight, and to an address in Montpellier a single pack of tvorog would cost €7.25 to a pickup point or €10.50 to the door. Ordering one pack at a time works out expensive.

AKHTAMAR (akhtamar.fr, Strasbourg) charges €5 per parcel up to roughly 2 kg, and delivery is free over €100. But the terms of sale on the site are still an unfilled template: no delivery times, no rules for chilled goods. The basket takes kefir and frozen pelmeni without a word about keeping them cold. There’s no tvorog in the catalogue, and don’t trust the “in stock” label either: when we tried, the basket refused a kefir marked as in stock.

Anahit (anahit.fr, Marseille) names Nice on its delivery page as one of the cities it delivers around, within a 10 km radius. But on 6 October, Marseille was the only option at checkout, and everyone else is invited to sign up: delivery to your town “will depend on the number of people interested”.

And don’t bother with the sites from older round-ups: chez-tema.com no longer loads, boutique.prestigerusse.com has suspended orders, magasinrusse.fr has become a travel and visa blog, and on chateaurusse.com almost every product is priced at €0.00.

How we checked this list

We did the check on 6 October 2026. We looked up each shop in the SIRENE business register, on OpenStreetMap and on its own page, and then the whole list went through an independent second check. Hours and phone numbers only appear in a card if they were confirmed. Eight of the thirteen shops are missing something, and you can see it right there in the card: before you go, phone them if there’s a number, or ask in the chat.

The year in the register is when the current business was registered at that address, not when the shop opened, since the owner may have changed. That’s why we never write “opened in such-and-such a year”. Of today’s businesses, Avrora Market was registered first, in 2008, while Gastronomie Russe and Stolitsa on rue de France already featured in a Russian-language round-up of Nice shops back in 2014.

What didn’t check out from the old lists, so you don’t make a wasted trip:

• Matriochka, 10 boulevard du Tzarewitch: closed in 2016 according to the register. Don’t confuse it with Matrioshka at 41 rue de la Buffa, which is a different shop and is open.
• Kazatchok, 105 rue de Roquebillière: neither the register nor the maps know of any such shop at this address, and websites just keep copying the same old listing from one another.
• Kalinka, 12 rue d’Angleterre: the business is still listed as active in the register, but the other sources disagree, and we couldn’t confirm the shop. Kalinka Plus is trading on the same street at number 11, and you’ll find it in the cards above.

Been to one of these shops and know hours that aren’t in its card? Post them in the chat and we’ll check and add them.

For housing, paperwork, the cathedral and meetups, see our Nice guide. Shops in the other southern cities are in our directory of Russian shops.