Pyshki of Saint Petersburg

A pyshka is a ring of yeast dough fried in oil and buried in icing sugar, eaten hot, and in St Petersburg it comes with a particular institution attached: the pyshechnaya on Bolshaya Konyushennaya, open since 1958, which has kept its marble-topped tables, its steel counter, its queue system and its coffee with condensed milk more or less unchanged through everything that happened afterwards. It was given heritage status in 2018 to protect the interior. You queue, pay, take a plate, stand or sit at a shared table, and eat with sugar all over your hands and coat. Muscovites call the same object a ponchik and the two cities argue about the name, which is a small piece of the larger and permanent argument between them. Other pyshechnayas exist across the city with the same formula. The product is simple, hot, greasy and cheap, and that is the entire point.

What you actually see

• The 1958 interior - marble tables and a steel counter kept as they were, now protected.
• The queue system - pay, take a plate, find a shared table.
• The coffee with condensed milk - the standard accompaniment, unchanged for decades.
• The name argument - pyshka here, ponchik in Moscow, and neither city concedes.

When to go

All year. Half an hour. Mornings are calmer; the queue runs out of the door at lunchtime.

Honest expectations

The queue is long at peak and the seating is shared and cramped. Service is brusque by design. Cash is often preferred. It is fried dough and sugar and nothing more; the appeal is the place, not the cuisine.

Nearby

Nevsky Prospekt and the Church on Spilled Blood are a short walk.