Famous Seattle bakery, Piroshky Piroshky, schedules Boise stop on pop-up tour
A renowned bakery in Seattle’s Pike Place Market is coming to Boise.
The catch is that it’s only for one day.
Piroshky Piroshky is taking online orders for delivery of the Russian bakery’s namesake piroshkies, cinnamon coffee rolls, cheddar garlic rolls and other treats. The company will take orders through Tuesday, Aug. 17, package them up and ship them frozen to Boise by an Alaska Airlines flight for pickup the next day.
Last year, bakery owner Olga Sagan began offering popups in Washington cities as a way to keep her 70 employees working during the coronavirus pandemic. The company had closed its four Seattle stores early in the pandemic. Sagan pivoted to offer products online, and Piroshky Piroshky hit the road, soon extending the bakery’s reach beyond Washington.
“We went to Washington D.C.,” Sagan said by phone. “We went to St. Louis. We went to Chicago. We went to Fairbanks and Anchorage, Alaska, Portland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Houston and Austin. We did Missoula, Montana, and Monmouth, Oregon.”
And Boise.
Piroshky Piroshky visited Boise initially in June and the response merited a return trip, Sagan said.
Orders can placed through 3 p.m. Tuesday and picked up from 4 to 6 p.m. Wednesday at the Switchback Food Truck Park at the corner of Old Hickory and Wolf Tree streets in Harris Ranch.
Prices are the same as in the company’s stores in Seattle, but customers must place a minimum order of $45.
“We need about 100 orders to make this successful,” Sagan said. “We need that many orders because we don’t charge customers for packaging or delivery.”
The first Boise pop-up netted about 60 orders, and through Wednesday, about 35 people had placed orders. Sagan said most pop-up orders come in the last two or three days before delivery.
“A lot of people were disappointed last time, because they did not know we were coming and found out after the fact,” said Sagan, who is scheduled to be in Boise herself. “So that’s why we decided to keep Boise on and come back. We’re excited to be there again.”
Sagan hopes to schedule another Boise pop-up before the holidays in December.
A piroshky, sometimes spelled piroshkie, is a Russian or Ukranian hand pie. Yeasted bread dough or pastry is stuffed with savory or sweet fillings. Recipes are passed down from generation to generation and each family has its own recipe and favorite fillings, she said.
Piroshky Piroshky offers a regular mix of fillings. There’s a savory piroshky filled with beef and cheese piroshky, another with beef and onion and one filled with chicken, curry and rice. Sweet offerings include an apple cinnamon roll, a cinnamon cardamon braid and a cranberry apple roll.
There are vegan pastries, including a piroshky with potato and mushroom and veggie chipotle. The cheddar garlic and potato cheese rolls are vegetarian. Some piroshkies and rolls include ingredients from other Pike Place Market vendors, including clam chowder, smoked sockeye salmon, sausage and Tillamook cheese from Oregon.
The company also offers limited-time menu items. For August, the bakery is featuring braided cinnamon coffee rolls topped with streusel and dusted with powdered sugar and a cabbage and onion piroshky.
Customers can also order quarts of clam chowder — a decidedly non-Russian soup but a Seattle favorite — borscht and chicken or pork and chicken pelmeni dumplings.
When Piroshky Piroshky was founded in 1992, Sagan spent a lot of time explaining to customers just what she was selling.
“Right now it’s a tourist destination, but 25 years ago it was just a little market with a little bit of tourists during the summer,” Sagan said. “In the beginning, I would have to explain thousands and thousands of times the meaning of a piroshky. People don’t ask what it is anymore.”
The bakery’s profile rose significantly following a 2007 visit by Anthony Bourdain for an episode of his television show “No Reservations.” He raved about a sausage piroshky and a bowl of borscht.
And Sagan didn’t even get a chance to speak with him.
“Before his visit, I had my water broke, I was pregnant, and I had to go to the hospital and never got to meet him,” Sagan said. “The program was such high quality that his show and his approach really made a difference.”
Whenever the episode shows in reruns, the bakery gets a boost in business, she said.
When the pandemic began in March 2020, shipping was a minor part of Piroshky Piroshky’s business. The company sent out two to three boxes a week and around 50 in December. Now the company sends its products across the country, both with popups and online sales.
Piroshky Piroshky just reopened its flagship Pike Place Market store on Monday
The feedback Piroshky Piroshky receives from its pop-up events exceeds even what the staff hears at the stores, Sagan said.
“It is a completely different environment, and they want to talk to us and they tell us stories,” she said. “It’s really building connections with our customers.”
