Bonjour à tous! My name is Mariia.
One might think that I must be 90 years old now since my photos lo0k like early French Nouvelle Vague cinema.
But I was born in 1991 in the Russian town of Kaluga; back then - in the collapsing USSR.
INFO. Two things we are proud of in Kaluga:
1. Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the father of Human Spacetravel
2. Cosmonauts museum, filled to the brim with real space equipment, sputniks & ships - a definite reason to travel beyond Moscow.
Welcome to my French Gourmet boutique
in the Netherlands🇳🇱
Let me tell a bit about myself and how
🇫🇷Terre à table came to life
In 2018 I moved from Russia to the Netherlands 🇳🇱 to work in a creative advertising agency.
After many years dedicated to the corporate world, I felt eager to start something of my own. And in spring 2024 ‘what ifs’ turned into a research and tons of entrepreneurial figuring-out.
The choice to focus on delicious products from small producers of France wasn’t random for these 2 personal reasons:
I love natural products, now
My family lived in a house with a garden, where we grew everything for our table: in summer we enjoyed the fresh veg & fruit, and in winter - the preserves.
We also kept chickens and roosters for eggs and meat - I loved playing with them, even though at times they bit me and I ended up crying like this:
As a child I didn’t appreciate our garden and the clean food it gave, and when I started living by myself, I chose convenience of processed food over nutrition.
I hated cooking and loved the hyperbolised flavours of everything packaged. By mid 20s I saw the effects of ultra-processed food on my body - I looked all puffy, I definitely didn’t feel good (despite the manic grim) and I started having health issues.
Luckily living in the Netherlands and taking many inspiring trips to France and Italy taught me that there is nothing better than FRESH food. And it doesn’t require much time or many ingredients to cook.
Recreating flavours at home made me love cooking from scratch and experiment with new ingredients. Seeing the impact of a good, diverse diet on my body, I can’t go back to ultra-processed foods and now choose only the highest-quality ready-to-eat options.
And that's why I naturally felt drawn to the world of French gastronomy and artisanal production. For me, it represents the pinnacle of product craftsmanship and flavour, rooted in a deep respect for harvests and regional distinctions.
Setting up Terre à Table was my way of staying connected to this ethical, high-quality food philosophy—even if it sometimes leans a little into indulgence. But that’s the beauty of it: it’s about balance, joy, and celebrating food that’s both exciting and good for you.
And honestly, I love sharing that passion with others who are on the same quest for flavour and quality.
2. Hello, my name is Mariia and I am a francophile
When I was 6, I watched this…
“Le Petit Baigneur” with Louis de Funès, and I thought it was the funniest thing ever!
I wanted more, and I ended up watching everything that was available of Louis de Funès.
On the other front, my granny preferred more romantic and adventurous genres of French cinema, thus every weekend we would travel to France of 17th century as portrait by the Golon couple and admired the beauty of Michèle Mercier. Or the handsomeness of Jean Marais as the revenge plotting Edmond Dantès.
I explored more humour with Gérard Dépardieu, adventure or drama with Jean-Paul Belmondo, some inner darkness with Alain Delon… And fell into delirious laughter coma with Les Charlots.
So when it was time for me to go to Uni, I knew - to open the world I had to study languages, and it wasn’t hard to guess which one I wanted to pursue.
2009 - 2014,
Meet Mariia, a student at Kaluga Pedagogical university and a future proud teacher of the French and English languages.
She kind of already knows she won’t become a teacher - the years of private tutoring and practice time in state schools proved she doesn’t have the patience, but she really enjoys learning the languages.
Those were exciting years, filled with Francofever, that made the language learning more tangible.
The original cast of “Notre Dame de Paris” musical comes to perform in Moscow.
We all end up going with my uni group and humming “Belle” for the next two years.
Remember our Kaluga Cosmonauts museum?
Pierre Cardin visits Kaluga to give the space-themed fashion show among the space exhibits.
The whole town was buzzed, what an event! As part of the tour around Kaluga, he visited our University, and we had a chance to ask him a few questions in our very modest broken French at the time.
