Most people have never heard of a banya. That’s worth fixing. The Russian Banya of Dallas has been open for nearly two decades in a shopping center on East Rosemeade Parkway in Carrollton, doing something that no other public facility in Texas does — running a traditional wood-fired Russian bathhouse alongside a full kitchen serving the kind of food you don’t find anywhere else in the Metroplex. Andrew Zimmern put it on his top five list when he came through Dallas filming for the Travel Channel. The regulars who fill the place on weekends already knew.
The bathhouse side runs three rooms. The Finnish sauna is hot and mostly dry. The Turkish hammam holds milder heat at full humidity. The Russian parilka is the main event — wood-fired, ferocious, and the real reason people drive out here. The cold plunge pool holds at 30 to 32 degrees, which by the facility’s own account is the coldest public plunge in Texas. After twenty minutes in the parilka, that water feels exactly like it should. Robes and towels are provided at the front. Bring your own shower slippers.
Aromatherapy sessions run inside the sauna on even hours throughout the day. The platza service — where an attendant works a bundle of soaked oak leaves over your body to open the pores and get the circulation moving — is the traditional centerpiece of the banya experience and worth booking ahead. Massage is available as well. Most people end up staying four to five hours without planning to.
The restaurant is called Volga, and it earns a visit on its own. Chef Niyara Alieva runs the kitchen, drawing on recipes from Russia, Ukraine, and Central Asia that reflect the full breadth of what Eastern European cooking actually looks like. Everything is made from scratch.
Start with the khachapuri — Georgian cheese-stuffed bread, baked until the crust is golden and the center is molten, served with ajika, a roasted bell pepper paste for dipping. It’s one of those things that disappears faster than expected. The shuba is a layered herring salad built with beets, potatoes, carrots, and egg — a Russian home-cooking classic that almost nobody makes well outside an actual Russian kitchen. This one is the real thing…