By Paul Reidinger

IF WE FREE -associate about Russia, we come up with: snow, Brezhnev in a fur hat, missiles parading through Red Square, vodka, onion domes on Orthodox churches, invading armies (of Napoleon and Hitler) frozen in failure at the gates of Moscow, Stravinsky. We would likely think too of the literature, which in addition to its martial grandeur and moral subtleties is full of intimate warmth – and food. In Gogol's Dead Souls, a traveler named Tchitchikov finds refuge on a stormy night in the country home of an old woman; in the morning he wakes to find "the table ... already spread with mushrooms, pies, fritters, cheesecakes, doughnuts, pancakes, open tarts with all sorts of different fillings, some with onions, some with poppy seeds, some with curds, and some with fish, and there is no knowing what else." And egg pie is on the way. And that's just breakfast.

Katia's, A Russian Tea Room, which has peeked out from a cozy corner in the Inner Richmond for a decade now under the guidance of its eponymous owner Katia Troosh, doesn't serve breakfast, but its lunch and dinner menus do sound many a Gogol-ish chord – of welcome and of earthy plenty, prepared and presented with care – and remind us that Russia has a grace and culinary style all its own. Katia's is a lovely place to duck into when the weather is inclement, or clement, and it is a lovely place just to look at, with its wide windows and its blond-wood tables draped with neat white tablecloths. Katia's isn't fancy, but it is unmistakably touched by a certain bourgeois romance we might associate, or free-associate, with the pages of Tolstoy or the icy streets of St. Petersburg one would be hurrying along toward the opera or the Hermitage.

Russia is 11 time zones of immensity, and "Russian" food is accordingly diverse. At some home-style places elsewhere in the Richmond (which has a few telltale onion domes to navigate by), you might find yourself eating feta cheese and dolma, or salads made with Israeli couscous, or curried chicken – all of which tell us that the Russian neighborhood runs from the Balkans through the Middle East toward the Indian subcontinent. Katia's menu takes most of its cues, though, from what most of us probably regard as the traditional heart of Russia; its smoked salmon and blini, herring and pickles speak of the Slavic lands that adjoin the Baltic.

Of course St. Petersburg – city of Peter the Great – sits on the Baltic. The city, like its namesake, has always looked to the West, and particularly to France, for cultural nourishment. But it looks east too. It was in St. Petersburg that the recipe for beef stroganoff, possibly the most famous of Russian dishes, won a cooking contest in the 1890s. We can only speculate as to how well Katia's version ($15.50) would hold up, but I suspect the answer is quite well. The beef strips are tender but not flaccid and the sauce rich with sour cream, though not so rich as to overwhelm the mushrooms. The accompanying basmati rice has more personality than the usual plain white kind, and nestled in it are pickled vegetables, crunchy with a bit of well-considered acid: carrot coins and florets of broccoli and cauliflower.

Blini ($18) are pancakes, presumably of the sort that, en masse, greeted Mr. Tchitchikov at break of dawn, but crepes is the word most of us would probably choose to describe these flat, richly browned disks, which arrive two at a time still warm from the pan and ready for stuffing with a host of wintry savories: smoked salmon, herring, salmon roe, sliced onion, and sour cream. We ran out of savory fillings before our last pair of blini arrived, so we ended up spreading these with apricot jam ($2.50), sprinkling them with powdered sugar, and having them for dessert, along with some silk-smooth Crimean port ($3.50), served in a shot glass the shape of a Cossack boot.

Cabbage is a lesser presence on the menu than one would have supposed – or hoped, if one has come to see the joys of cabbage. It turns up embedded in a golden piroshka ($2.50) and, shredded and pickled, as a mound amid rounds of roma tomato and cucumber ($5). But it does not show its face on the tasting platter ($14.50), which is nonetheless a fairly detailed map to Katia's culinary style, from cubes of pickled red beet to a mound of salade Olivier (potato salad with hard-boiled egg and dilled mayonnaise) to a heap of eggplant "caviar" – less salty than the real thing and the better for it. The platter also includes crunchy-fresh dill pickles and voluptuously firm marinated mushrooms, simple stuff one does not grow tired of.

Despite the breadth and heft of much of Katia's spread, you can clean your plate without being sent reeling. This is because the portions (and the prices) are reasonable in scale. Tchitchikov no doubt would be relieved.

Katia's, A Russian Tea Room. 600 Fifth Ave. (at Balboa), S.F. (415) 668-9292. Lunch: Wed.-Fri., 11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m. Dinner: Sun. and Wed.-Thurs., 5-9 p.m.; Fri.-Sat., 5-10 p.m. Beer and wine. American Express, Carte Blanche, Diners Club, Discover, MasterCard, Visa. Wheelchair accessible. Not noisy.