Translated: my food.
What I am getting at is, my kind of food. Cue a writing on a tucked away Serbian restaurant in the East Village neighborhood of New York City- Kafana.
I am Bosnian, and incredibly proud to be. While the debate of Serb-father and Bosnian-mother and former Yugoslavia is a conversation for another blog site- I was born in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia, and I eat like a true Bosnian- with pleasure and love and no guilt whatsoever. The best foods can be found in my own home (and no, Mina is not forcing me to say this) but when I get to return to Sarajevo, there is nothing like eating through the streets Baščaršija. From pita to breads to ice cream to cakes, the food is irreplaceable. Keeping that in mind, I visited Kafana (translated to Cafe), with an open mind, and empty belly.
This truly is, my kind of food. I’ll start with the left and move clockwise.
Pileci raznjici- chicken kebabs. Grilled and served with a side salad and lemon for taste. This is a safe dish if you are venturing into Balkan food for the first time. Most are familiar with chicken kebabs from Middle Eastern or Turkish cuisine, and the Ottoman past of Yugoslavia has most certainly stuck around in the cooking. These are great! Grilled well and perfect to combine with kajmak (homemade cream cheese) or ajvar (red pepper and eggplant spread) which are also offered on the menu. I did not regret getting these; however, if you are looking to venture out a bit more, the menu has some even more traditional foods that I would recommend, with an example coming up. Sopska- tomato, cucumber, and onion salad with feta cheese. A salad without lettuce and dressing, just vegetables and some feta for taste. What I look about sopska is that it is filling, healthy and while a full dish on it’s own, it also serves well with most mains along your dinner journey, rather than an appetizer. Get your vegetables in by adding this to your meal! Fun fact: sopska is Bulgaria’s national salad dish and the vegetables in the salad were chosen because they resemble the national flag. So many interesting flavors and dishes from different eras in Yugoslavia’s history can still be found and, I believe, is what makes it so interesting and tasty.
Cevapi- traditional grilled minced meat. This is it. This is my number one recommendation. The meal of all meals from my homeland. Cevapi are one of the best known dishes from the Balkan area. Served warm with a pita bread (lepinja), onions, and at times some sort of sauce companion (I prefer ajvar or kajmak), cevapi are hard to disappoint. These surely did not as they took me right back to the streets of Bascarsija. Still similar to kebabs, these grilled meats were savory and juicy and created a robust tender explosion of flavor with each bite. I am not so sure what makes cevapi better than other grilled meats, perhaps its the preparation of the meats which typically can take multiple nights, or the simplicity of the seasonings being solely salt and pepper, or the accompaniments being yummy on their own, but I highly recommend this being the dish you get at Kafana. Pomfrit- freshest fries you can get. Not much to discuss here although it’s important to note that pomfrit are fried from fresh potatoes and seasoned with salt that make them irresistible. The prep method really makes for the freshest fries, I’ve always thought this of fries my mom makes at home, and Kafana is no exception, done just like home!
Not pictured here is the zeljanica- a spinach and feta cheese pie. At Mina’s, we also call it pita sa spinatom. Kafana uses phyllo dough, similar to the more familiar Greek “spinakopita,” while Mina makes a homemade dough and that is ALL the difference! I would 100 times over and over again recommend Mina’s zeljanica because of this difference and skip out on the phyllo dough version. It’s just not the real thing to me. One grievance. (Side note: you can “translate this page” to see how to make Mina’s pita).
Regardless of what you try, and there is quite the variety on the menu, don’t forget plenty of red wine. Plenty and plenty of good red wine.
