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

If you live or work in the centre, you’re in luck: three of the shops are within a kilometre of each other. Krystal is about a hundred metres from Jeanne d’Arc metro, Alimentation Balkanique 2 is on rue de Bayard between Jeanne d’Arc and Jean Jaurès, and Saveurs Bulgares is on rue de la Colombette, two hundred metres from Jean Jaurès. Mixt Market City has moved north to avenue des États-Unis (La Vache metro), and for Suzanna in Bonnefoy the bus is your best bet: the Hauts de Bonnefoy stop is 25 metres from the door.

Below are the cards for all five, with what we know about each one for certain. We checked them against the SIRENE business register, OpenStreetMap and the shops’ own pages.

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.

Where to buy tvorog, buckwheat and kefir in Toulouse

We’ll tell it like it is: we found no proof that any of the five shops regularly stocks tvorog (farmer’s cheese), buckwheat or kefir. We searched the shops’ websites and directory listings, and we’re not going to make up what’s on the shelves. If you’re after something specific, phone first. Every card has a number.

Here’s what we could confirm. Suzanna’s website lists pelmeni (Russian dumplings), pickles, lavash and spices, and directory listings add caviar, smoked fish, jam, honey and tea. Mixt Market City sells caviar, pickles, spices and sweets, and Krystal’s directory listings mention caviar and sweets. One more handy detail: Suzanna and Krystal both work as parcel pickup points, and at Suzanna, according to the shop itself, you can send or receive an international money transfer.

Now for the three things people usually make the trip for.

Buckwheat is easiest to get at an ordinary supermarket, where it goes by the name sarrasin. The toasted kind we’re used to is labelled sarrasin grillé or kasha: in Carrefour’s catalogue, for example, that’s Jardin Bio étic, 750 g. A packet of sarrasin décortiqué without those words is hulled but untoasted, in other words green buckwheat. Blé noir is the Breton name for the same plant, and farine de blé noir is its flour, which the French use for galettes.

Kefir is at Auchan and Carrefour: Lactel sells 50 cl and one-litre bottles, and Auchan has its own brand in 750 ml. The label says Kéfir in big letters, with Lait fermenté as the legal name. Don’t let that throw you: almost all kefir in France is labelled that way.

Tvorog is the hardest of the three. In a French supermarket the closest things are faisselle (a fresh cheese that drains in a little mould with holes in it, hence the name) and fromage blanc, though fromage blanc is only lightly drained and runnier than tvorog. For the real thing, that leaves a Russian shop, if you’re lucky and they have it, or delivery.

If the nearest shop is a long way off

Toulouse is the westernmost city in our directory, and the nearest towns with verified shops are a fair way off: two in Béziers, four in Perpignan and four in Montpellier, which is about 2 hours 20 minutes by train. All their addresses are in our directory of shops across the South. From Albi or Carcassonne, Toulouse is about an hour’s drive, so if you’re coming into the city on business, bring the list and a cool bag.

If you’re heading to Montpellier for a community meetup anyway (people from Toulouse have come over for them before), drop in at Épicerie Arménie. It’s our community partner and we shop there ourselves. According to the owner (September 2026), they have tvorog, kefir and pelmeni.

The rest you’ll have to order. We checked the prices below on the shops’ websites on 6 October 2026:

• katucha.fr (Metz) ships by Colissimo anywhere in mainland France, up to 20 kg per order. It has all three: 15% tvorog (275 g, €2.40), toasted buckwheat (800 g, €3.69) and 2% kefir (1 kg, €1.99). Orders with chilled items only go out on Mondays and Tuesdays, and the site doesn’t say a word about insulated packaging. Frozen food isn’t shipped at all: pelmeni and vareniki (stuffed dumplings) can only be collected in Metz or delivered locally. There’s no rate card on the site: the basket works out delivery by weight. We put together test baskets for delivery to Montpellier without ordering anything: shipping a single pack of tvorog would cost €7.25 to a pickup point or €10.50 to the door, and twelve packs of buckwheat (9.84 kg) €16.25 to a pickup point. Shipping one pack costs three times as much as the tvorog itself, so it makes sense to stock up in one go.
• akhtamar.fr (Strasbourg) charges €5 per parcel up to about 2 kg and delivers free over €100. Buckwheat (Uvelka, 800 g, €3.90) and kefir (3.5%, 500 g, €1.99) are in the catalogue, tvorog isn’t. The basket happily takes both kefir and frozen pelmeni at the same €5, but the terms of sale on the site are an unfilled template: no delivery times, not a word about keeping things cold. Order chilled food from here in hot weather at your own risk.

Anahit only delivers within 10 km of Marseille, Vitrolles, La Ciotat and a few other towns, and Slavmarket only covers Paris and the inner suburbs, so neither is any help in Toulouse. As for magasinrusse.fr, it’s now a travel and visa blog, not a shop.

How we checked this list

We ran every shop through three sources: the SIRENE business register (is it trading, and at what address?), OpenStreetMap and the shops’ own pages (websites and directory listings). Anything doubtful we then checked again in a separate pass. The last check was on 6 October 2026. We couldn’t confirm the hours of Suzanna and Saveurs Bulgares, which is why their cards don’t show any.

Along the way we found three traps worth knowing about before you set out:

• City Market has moved. The shop on avenue des États-Unis has gone from number 49 to number 109, and directories now list it as Mixt Market City. The new address has been in the register since 2 January 2025. A different grocery, EPICERIE MONDIALE TOULOUSE, has been registered at number 49 since 10 April 2026.
• There’s no Kristal on rue de l’Arc. A Russian-language directory from 2020 lists a shop called Кристал (Kristal) at 4 rue de l’Arc. The register shows only non-food businesses there, with no grocery now or ever, and Kristal’s phone number is the same as Krystal’s on boulevard de Strasbourg. It’s one and the same shop: a Russian grocery on boulevard de Strasbourg has been on OpenStreetMap since 2014.
• Alimentation Balkanique on avenue de Muret is closed. That shop, run by the same company, closed on 14 January 2025, so head to rue de Bayard instead.

Been to one of these shops and seen tvorog or kefir on the shelf? Tell us in the chat when it was, and we’ll check and add it to the card. And for housing, paperwork, the church and meetups in the city, see our Toulouse guide.