Think nestling dolls with tommy guns, and you’ll start to get the hang of Dillinger’s Café, the new coffee shop/Russian barbecue/vodka palace on Evergreen Ave (near the Evergreen ice cream shop). The cafe is the fresh fruit of two lovely loins: Mary Kaushansky and Ksyenya Roz, both born in the Soviet Union and grown in Brooklyn. Finally, after a long and laborious struggle, Dillinger’s will be set loose upon the world this week.

Mary is petite, dark-haired, raven-eyed. It’s not hard to picture her dancing barefoot around a camp fire, shaking a tambourine and casting spells into the air. But in the café, all that fierce energy has found its footing in more concrete pursuits. Her partner, Ksenya, is more luxuriously powerful—a tall, thin women with shrewd eyes and dirty-blonde hair. Ksenya commands the room, but the friendship and equality between the two women is impressive and inspiring and at least a little girl-power-awesome. They’ve been best friends since the age of six, when their families immigrated from the Soviet Union to Coney Island/Brighton Beach. Although Mary’s parents stayed in the US, Ksenya’s moved back to the Ukraine to pursue business interests, and the café is decorated with cute teapots and other trinkets that have been sent over from the motherland.