SF’s Cinderella Bakery to open long-awaited Mission District location

After nearly eight years of delays, neighborhood pushback and rising construction costs, Cinderella Bakery & Café, San Francisco’s oldest Russian bakery, is finally opening a new location in the Mission District.

Cinderella has been a beloved destination in the Richmond District’s “Little Russia” neighborhood for its famed layered honey cakes, fresh piroshki and beef pelmeni since 1953. More recently, as Cinderella’s wholesale business grew, and employees found themselves working on top of one another in the Richmond kitchen, owners Mike and Marika Fishman started searching for a second location. They found the 24th Street property, the former home of La Victoria Bakery, a more than half-century-old Mexican panaderia, and purchased it for about $3 million in 2018. 

The 3,500-square-foot bakery, which will open on Aug. 28 at 2937 24th St., is about three times the size of the original Cinderella and will eventually house all wholesale production.

“We wanted to have some security, stability and we wanted to grow,” Marika Fishman said. “We love the Richmond, but we also want to expand to another part of the city.” 

Yet long before it even opened, Cinderella’s expansion to the Mission District sparked controversy. In 2018, the family that had founded La Victoria decided to sell its building. Danny Gabriner and Laura Hernandez, who were subleasing the bakery and running it in its last year of operation, were served with eviction notices, along with four other sub-tenants who used the kitchen space Mission Local reported at the time. Under the terms of an agreement in the family trust, the owners selected a new buyer.

The loss of La Victoria, which Gabriel Maldonado had opened in 1951, drew the attention of the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District, a community organization dedicated to the preservation of Latino businesses and culture on 24th Street. In the Mission, which has become a symbol of gentrification and displacement in San Francisco, Calle 24 called for a boycott of Cinderella and said it would picket outside the business. 

The Fishmans agreed to certain conditions for a business operating in the Latino cultural district, city records show, including honoring the space’s location and heritage with a mural and offering the space for community events. Calle 24 eventually lent its support to the project. (La Victoria partners Danny Gabriner and Laura Hernandez later reopened the panaderia nearby as Victoria SF.)

“It’s all behind us,” Mike Fishman said. “We’re just looking forward to being part of the community.” 

The Fishmans said last week that they plan to hire Mission residents, keep prices accessible and feature local artists’ work. A photo gallery of La Victoria is on display inside the bakery. Outside the building, the Fishmans commissioned a 12-foot mural called “Viva Cinderella,” made by the Mission-based Precita Eyes Muralists Association. The painting draws elements from Russian and Mexican cultures, including a matryoshka, the Russian nesting doll, holding a monarch butterfly, a symbol for Latino rights with roots in indigenous Mexican culture, according to the artist statement. 

Financing and permitting issues also contributed to Cinderella’s delays. The Fishmans had to secure a conditional use authorization from the city’s Planning Commission, among other requirements, while Mike Fishman said it was difficult to secure business loans during the COVID-19 pandemic, and construction and material costs have soared since then. Major renovations on the bakery did not begin until about a year and a half ago.

When the doors finally open this week, Cinderella’s menu will be identical to the Richmond location, with pork and beef-filled pelmeni served with sour cream, cabbage-stuffed piroshki, and Cinderella’s honey cake, made of neat layers of honey-infused sponge cake, tres leches buttercream and caramel condensed milk. Coffee will come from Ritual Coffee Roasters, alongside wine, beer and kvas, a fermented Eastern European grain drink. The Mission District Cinderella will operate from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. daily, with plans to extend hours into the evenings. 

Eventually, the larger kitchen could give Cinderella room to experiment with other baked goods, such as sweet piroshki filled with chocolate or Nutella, coriander-infused rye bread, or country loaves. The Fishmans are also thinking of adding soft-serve topped with crumbled honey cake or sour cherries, as well as “Russian pizza,” with possible toppings such as caviar, smoked salmon or herring.

Marika Fishman designed the new café to feel bright and airy, with blond wood detailing, plants and red Spanish Colonial tile. There are about 36 seats indoors, plus sidewalk seating along Alabama Street. Several matryoshkas and an art piece featuring traditional Russian folk characters decorate the space.  

The Kaluda family opened Cinderella in 1953, according to the Fishmans, and sisters Lydia Repin and Eugenia Belonogoff took over in 1970. They were part of an early wave of Russian immigrants who fled the Russian Revolution, first settling in China before relocating to San Francisco. Arguably San Francisco’s most famous Russian bakery, Cinderella was officially recognized as a San Francisco Legacy Business in 2017 for its preservation of Russian cultural and culinary traditions. Repin and Belonogoff sold the bakery, along with its recipes and traditions, to the Fishman family in the 1980s. Mike Fishman began working there as a teenager with his mother and became sole owner with his wife, Marika, in 2008.

As immigrants from Russia and Latvia, respectively, Mike and Marika Fishman were drawn to the Mission’s diverse immigrant community. “A sense of family and community, that’s part of Russian culture. It’s a big part of Latino culture, too,” Marika Fishman said. “Family, food and sharing it.”

Cinderella Bakery & Café. Opening Aug. 28. 2937 24th St., San Francisco. cinderellabakery.com