bobby rakhman

For years, one of the most popular grocery stores in the Brighton Beach section of Brooklyn was called “A Taste of Russia.” Then, in late February, Russian President Vladimir Putin launched the invasion of Ukraine. Within a week, the store’s co-owner, Bobby Rakhman, had taken down his sign and replaced it with a new one: “International Food.” “When the war started,” says Rakhman, who came here from the Soviet Union as a child in the 1970s, “we felt very uncomfortable with the name Taste of Russia. Even though it didn't mean anything political, it made people feel bad that the name Russia was associated with a store located in the midst of, as we call it, ‘Little Odessa’.”