Photos: Chris Emeott
Prestige Market & Deli specializes in Eastern European flavors.
Come December, a subtle change arrives on the shelves of Maple Grove’s Prestige Market & Deli. Brands from the Baltics, Belarus, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia and Ukraine embrace the winter season with blue and white packaging. Father Frost appears on packets of candies and cookies in his blue quilted coat. The changes in the cafe are easier to spot. The drink menu features seasonal holiday-themed sips. The refrigerated deli display boasts an expanded selection of caviar. The bakery offers specialty pies like cherry and cottage cheese, dried fruit and salmon. Prestige Market & Deli is gearing up for Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Olivier (above) and Herring (below) salads are staples at the Maloylo Christmas dinner table. They’re also both available year-round at Prestige Market & Deli.
Yana Maloylo says that while New Year’s Eve is generally the bigger holiday in Eastern Europe, Christmas is still a time to gather with family. “Everybody gets together and prepares food and hangs out for days preparing for a feast, essentially,” she says. Two of her family’s holiday staples are Olivier and Herring salads (which are available year-round at Prestige Market & Deli). Specialty meats, including homemade sausage, also make an appearance on the Maloylo’s Christmas dinner table. “Basically, [we make] things that take extra time to prepare, that you spend time with your family making for the holidays,” she says.
Prestige Market & Deli is truly a family affair. Yana Maloylo’s aunt Luda Bombeshko is head chef while her mom, Nella Maloylo (left), is the owner. Yana and her sister-in-law, Katie Maloylo (right), serve as managers for the day-to-day operations.
The Maloylos came to the United States from Belarus 25 years ago, but their holiday traditions have stayed more or less the same, which Yana says is fairly typical. “Even people that have been here their whole lives, they’re still doing the big Russian meal for Christmas and for New Year’s,” she says. While they have adopted gift-giving, Yana says the practice was foreign to her when she had her first American Christmas at 10 years old. “The only gift you would really have [in Belarus] is maybe candy,” she says. It’s a tradition the Maloylos maintain at Prestige Market & Deli. “We’ll import a lot of different candy gift boxes around the holidays. Those sell really well because people are nostalgic for them.”
Canapés or crêpes topped with caviar are a popular treat that often make a special appearance on dinner tables around the holidays.
The Maloylo family has owned various businesses, but Yana says they always wanted to run a little grocery store or cafe. “And then things lined up to where I was moving back home, my sister-in-law was moving here, my mom, my aunt were all kind of in the right place at the right time,” she says. Her aunt, who has a history in restaurants, took over as head chef while her mom, Nella Maloylo, became the owner. Yana and her sister-in-law, Katie Maloylo, became managers for the market’s day-to-day operations.
Marking the Milestones
Prestige Market & Deli opened in November 2025, and its cafe component has distinguished it from other markets in the area. “People have been coming from far away because we have the hot food,” Yana says. Due to the size of the store, Prestige Market & Deli also offers a larger variety of staples for Slavic cuisine like buckwheat, a grain that’s harder to come by in American markets. “That’s one product we have a whole couple shelves of, a whole aisle of just grains,” Yana says. But the breakout snack for those in the know has been crab-flavored potato chips. “We can’t keep them in stock, honestly,” she says. “We’re getting like three, four cases of it a week, and we’re just flying through them.”
What’s taken the Maloylos by surprise has been the cafe and market’s warm reception by the non-Slavic community. “I think they’re the bigger portion of our customer base,” Yana says. “It’s trying something new, and then they realize it’s delicious, right? So they keep coming back.” On the grocery side of things, the pickles have proved to be an easy entry point for American customers. “We have a variety of different things we pickle ourselves that we sell in the store,” she says. The other universal language is sweets. “We go through a lot of chocolate and cookies that are Russian that people seem to enjoy as well,” she says.
Prestige Market & Deli
Instagram: @prestigemarketdeli
