Balkan food, cooking and stores

I've observed that there are many more products available in Chicago of late that are imported from Balkan countries...Albania, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia, etc. Not surprising since I'm sure there are many immigrants from these places. Anybody know about the cuisine in general or grocers in town that specialize in it? I do love ajvar (the red pepper/eggplant spread), but that's about where my knowlege stops. I'm working on a new addition of A Cook's Guide to Chicago and considering including a section on Balkan products, but feel uneducated. Thanks, Marilyn

cg:

Albany Park is a neighbourhood with lot of immigrants from the Balkans and consequently, Andy's (used to be called a "fruit ranch", but did they change that part of the name when they expanded?) is a grocery store that has lots of Balkan items, as well as Greek, Arab and Mexican goods (and probably more!). It's a good store and a fun one too precisely because of the interesting combination of things in stock. It's also across the street from the City Noor butcher shop (Palastinian run, halal, with a partly Bosnian clientele).

Andy's is on the east side of Kedzie, first block south of Lawrence.

Antonius

A lot of Balkan items are avaialble at Produce World, Morton Grove (Dempster & Waukegan) - they also have another, reportedly larger location further west somewhere (I forget where, but it's been posted on this board before). There's also a large market (can't remember the name - damn, the ginko biloba doesn't seem to be working today) across from Golf Mill at Milwaukee and Golf which has Balkan items. (Plus, there's a big Korean grocery nearly next door - an excellent food shopping destination.)

For Bosnian, I've always liked Bosanski Okusi (6014 N. Broadway Rd., Chicago) - having spent some time in all of the states of the former Yugoslavia, their stuff is authentic.

Another I haven't tried but sounds intriguing is Noli's (4839 N. Kedzie Ave., Chicago) for Albanian pizza.

cg:

If you're interested in a real Balkan restaurant experience, try Casino, a Bosnian Croatian place on the far southeast side of Chicago. As you can see from my report and that of Rene G, we all thought the place was pretty neat and worth the trip.

I just hope it's still there!

A

The other Produce World location is at Lawrence and Cumberland--not sure if its technically Chicago, Norridge, or Harwood Heights. I think that one may actually have an even better Balkan collection. In addition to the Polish clientele at the Morton Grove location, that store also caters to a large Asian and Russian Jewish contingent, while the Lawrence store, while certainly heavy on the Polish items, caters more to other eastern Europeans, including the Balkans. They're both good stores, however, and you'll certainly be able to get some Balkan items at either one.

Although not a Balkan state, both stores do stock some Bulgarian foods as well--I'm partial to the Bulgarian feta. The Lawrence store also has an interesting selection of Bulgarian and Romanian beers. The Morton Grove store has mostly Polish beers.

Addendum:

I don't know if it's still open, but there is a store called George's on Lawrence, just east of Damen, that is Balkan-owned (not to be confused with Papa Georges on Damen, just north of Lawrence.) I believe it was Croatian--although i lived in the area in the late 90s, and did not want to make inquiries on a sensitive subject at that time. I can only imagine the response if I guessed wrong..."So, are you guys Croatian?" "No, Serbian", followed by me exiting through a plate glass window.

The reason I thought it was Croatian was because I purchased a bottle of Maraschino liquer from Dalmatia there. If you're not familiar with this, get some. Kind of a light cherry brandy, which can be used to make some fantastic cockatails.

I know of two ver good Serbian markets, with canned goods and especially smoked meats and sausages. Both are on Lawrence, and both, oddly, I cannot remember the name. One is just east of Damen, and I think the name begins La, la-something. The second is west of Albany Park, at maybe Laramie, called, maybe Georges. Both places are on the north side of the street.

Rob

John M:

I think Bulgaria definitely rates as Balkan, Romania too.

Aren't there some Bulgarian restaurants on Harlem just south of the Kennedy? Any other Bulgarian businesses out there?

A

Antonius wrote:Any other Bulgarian businesses out there?

Certainly. Balkan Flavor, for one:

Posted on Chowhound, April 22, 2003:

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The store Balkan Flavor at Irving Park and Kimball is also Bulgarian. I stopped in on a Sunday morning a few weeks ago and was greeted with what seems to me a fairly typical lack of friendliness, though not any overt unfriendliness. It seems more a social club than a food store. There were about 3 shelves of dried goods (I picked up some very cheap jarred roasted red peppers), and a meat counter with sausage. Everything was in Bulgarian so I hesitated on the sausage, but eventually saw someone else pick up a horseshoe-shaped sausage and followed his lead. Unfortunately, it tasted a bit rancid to me--not at all to my taste, but several people bought it. They also have the tins of Bulgarian feta in small and very large quantities (25 lb. tin I think) and I plan to go back and get some tonight.

There was also a small shelf to check out Bulgarian books and videos, mostly porn, and editions of Bulgarian (or some Balkan) Playboy magazine with bare breasts and garish makeup displayed proudly on the cover.

But mostly, there were about 20 women on this Sunday morning sitting around 2 or 3 tables all smoking cigarettes and drinking Dixie cup coffee in a much smaller than living room sized space at the front of the store, bantering in Bulgarian and eating Bulgarian sweets. Quite an interesting place, though I'm not sure how much special it has to offer from a strictly culinary point of view.

Their business card, by the way, reads:
Bulgarian Food Store
Sudjutsi, Lukanki, Pastarmi (sic), Kebapcheta, Karnatcheta, Lutenitsa, Feta Cheese, Kashkaval, Etc.

Also interesting that the business card gives the owner's (Slavko Kostov) home and cell phone number.

Don't know what most of that is besides being kinds of sausage and cheese.

Here are a few more Bulgarian culture links that I found when trying to learn more.

http://www.bgusworld.com/IllinoisRestaurants.htm

http://www.bgclub.info/about.html

http://bulgarianpages.com/regional/chicago/chi_food.htm

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(Looks like two of these links have gone dead, but who knows, they may resurface.)

Rob visited about a month later:

Vital Information wrote:The other night, out of curiosity, I popped into Balkan Flavor on Irving Park near Elson. Aaron has already reported on this place as well (see link). I really liked it. There were two men drinking tea at a small table when I entered. As Aaron noted, the place does not quite look like a food store, the carpeting is an oddity. One spoke to me in Bulgarian. When he realized I was not, he decided to give me a quick immersion in Bulgarian meats. He sliced me off samples of several sausages, an oblong shaped salami with a white skin like Zim's Bende, a magenta shaded dry beef, and a course sausage link similiar to what you see at Italian deli's as "dry sausage." He explained to me that the sausages were for drinking. When I asked about the feta, he reacted a bit derisive. "Everyone has feta", he said. Instead, he cut me off a chunk of some kind of yellow cheese imported from Bulgaria, not rip-roaringly stong, but no swiss either. Slavko, as I eventually learned his name, recommends Chicago by Nights, on Central and Belmong (and thank you ver much, another exhibit in my case for greatest chow block) as the best place to eat Bulgarian food. Slavko made Balkan Flavor a highly enjoyable stop for me.

Cheers,

Aaron

Balkan Flavor
3424 W. Irving Park
Chicago, IL 60618
773-267-0109

Does anyone know what happened to Satko of Satko's Kitchen? It's been closed a while, but the Reader still has a review of it here:

http://www1.chicagoreader.com/cgi-bin/r ... &numb=2358

I remember having a very animated discussion with him one night - he's from Banja Luka in Northern Bosnia (where I studied briefly), and the food was probably about as upscale as Bosnian gets.

Vital Information wrote:I know of two very good Serbian markets . . . on Lawrence . . . on the north side of the street.

The three remaining Eastern European delis on the north side of Lawrence I can think of are George's (1964 W), DSD (3818 W), and Lalich (4208 W). I thought they were all Serbian owned but I'm really not sure.

nr706 wrote:Does anyone know what happened to Satko of Satko's Kitchen?

Isn't Satko still at Pizza Bubamara (4607 N Wolcott)? It's been a long time since I was there but I don't recall hearing it closed. Hereis an entertaining post of Seth's from Chowhound about his first encounter with Satko.

Yeah, I hadn't heard anything about Bubamara closing either. Also worth mentioning is Beograd on Irving Park.

There is a Bulgarian restaurant on Harlem Ave. right about 5300 north. It was called Mario's until about 3 weeks ago; it has changed owners and is now called AvantGuard. Haven't tried the new place much yet. The wine list is shorter, and they have more casual things like sandwiches on the menu. There are salads & sausages and such.

A door or two to the north there is a Serbian deli called, I think, Bella Rada.

A block to the south is a place called "Bulgarian Tradition" which maybe is a bar or restaurant. There's something forbidding about it, and despite being a fairly brave soul, I haven't wandered in there alone, yet.

I live pretty much across the street from these delights, so if any one wants to check it out give me a holla [or a PM].

Giovanna

p.s. Produce World West is in Norridge. [Not that there's any reason to care, but we all have our pedantic moments.] I haven't noticed a heavy predominance of Balkan goods, but there are several varieties of avjar on the shelf.

Speaking of Serbian. I had an excellent bowl of soup yesterday at Sunnyday Tap, a Serbian bar that serves food and morphs into a Serbian nightclub on the weekends.

The beef soup was chock full of tender meat and, while there was no bone or offal, was very rich as if the stock had been long simmered with marrow bone. I had a small soup, $3, which was a nice sized bowl, there's a large available. Included with the soup was soft bread, think Greek bread with a soft crust, and a small scoop of butter mixed with cheese.

Sunnyday Tap has daily soup specials, lamb, chicken, beef and something the bartenderess referred to as Soon, though she did not know exactly how to describe Soon. The general consensus, among the bar patrons, was it's bean soup with smoked meat.

Sunnyday Tap is not a restaurant per se, but more of a bar with food, though they do seem to have a decent menu line-up. One word of warning, the soup is pretty much the only thing on the menu less than $10. Actually, the menu seems to be setup for both dinner and sharing with a group.

There's table's in back, music on the weekends and the place is friendly, though can be a bit daunting as not much English is spoken.

Enjoy,
Gary

Sunnyday Tap
4953 N Elston.
Chicago, IL
773-725-5080

There has been a Balkan rundown before on the other board. I have some friends form Croatia and Serbia, and while there seem to be plenty of immigrants in Chicago, they don't tend to open restaurants (at least Balkan restaurants -- they are wont to open Italian places, IME). My freind from Split claims that there are no good Croatian restaurants here, and that Croatians don't generally want to eat home cooking in restaurants anyway. An interesting phenomenon, the way some cultures are restaurant heavy (Thai, Greek, Mexican) and others just don't get into the business.

For instance, I was just talking with a Sudanese cab driver. We amazed each other. He was shocked when I asked him where he got the qat he was chewing. I was amazed when he told me about the very large number of Sudanese in Chicago. (I don't recall the number, but it was several thousand according to this guy.) But no Sudanese restaurants that I am aware of. He didn't tell me where the qat was purchased, but he did say it's everywhere in that other Midwestern melting-pot, Minneapolis.

During the summer festival season, there is a very good cevapcici vendor who doles out solid versions of the sausages on the traditional flat bread, something like a fried English muffin, whose name I forget, covered with avjar.

The Balkan folks are good for opening stand-offish sports bars with drop-dead female servers whom you should not look at for very long, unless you don't mind a thick guy smoking Camels in an Addidas track suit staring at you in a different way. One such place is the mysterious, smoky "Chicago by Night." Another is the Floridian coffee shop.

Another, much more friendly spot, close to Arun's (Rob) is Brisku's Bistro. They have cask conditioned ale and Albanian bar food, with a little more Greek-Middle Eastern influence than other Balkan foods.

Little Bucharest is now another Northside "Irish Pub," and I never thought it was too great anyway, but they have onother location northwest, the address of which is on a sign over the new pub.

Then there's this place

http://www.skadarlija.com/

Really, there's a lot more out there, but I haven't tried too many of them.

JeffB wrote:There has been a Balkan rundown before on the other board. I have some friends form Croatia and Serbia, and while there seem to be plenty of immigrants in Chicago, they don't tend to open restaurants (at least Balkan restaurants -- they are wont to open Italian places, IME). My freind from Split claims that there are no good Croatian restaurants here, and that Croatians don't generally want to eat home cooking in restaurants anyway. An interesting phenomenon, the way some cultures are restaurant heavy (Thai, Greek, Mexican) and others just don't get into the business.

My understanding is that the primary reason for this is a largely young male population, ones that want the cooking they're familiar with but aren't able (or doesn't have the time) to cook it themselves. Obviously, though, some immigrants are more likely to start up a restaurant than others. And given that there are only about 5,000 Thai in the city, it seems like there are a disproportionately large number of thai restaurants.

-ed

Right, I agree, and that's why there are so many "bachelor" places for Mexican, Polish, Pakistani, etc. workers here. (So in that sense the Thai and Greek places are different in that they tend to open restaurants for "Americans" as opposed to their ethnic community.) But the Balkans would seem to fit the same mold as Polish/Mexican. Maybe the tropical-themed sports bar just meets the needs of the young Serbo-Croatian/Albanian/Montenegran etc. tradesman the way the Irish Pub (see Ginger's) meets the needs of the Irish (from Ireland) tradesman in Chicago.

There's also a new Albanian place on Irving Park in the old Drinski Safir spot...I stopped in briefly the day after they opened, and they didn't even have a menu available. Who knows, they may have closed by now.

JeffB wrote:Little Bucharest is now another Northside "Irish Pub," and I never thought it was too great anyway, but they have onother location northwest, the address of which is on a sign over the new pub.

Jeff:

I ate at Little Bucharest for the first time ca. 1990, if memory serves me well, and I thought it was a gas. Massive portions of tasty food for a couple of bucks. I went back a couple more times over the next five or six years and was disappointed, the last time disappointed bordering on appalled. I don't know if the delight of the first experience was all in my head or what, but the last time I was there it was pretty bad.

Oh well.

Antonius

JeffB wrote:Little Bucharest is now another Northside "Irish Pub," and I never thought it was too great anyway, but they have onother location northwest, the address of which is on a sign over the new pub.

I believe the Little Bucharest sibling is Continental Cafe, where I missed a a wonderful get-together a couple years back.

Aaron Deacon wrote:I believe the Little Bucharest sibling is Continental Cafe...

Aaron:

Thanks for adding that link. My first experience at Little Bucharest seemed in a general sense a lot more like what VI describes in his report. Maybe my last visit was the fluke and/or maybe the LB location had gone into a downward slide.

A

Devon Market at Greenview and Devon (1500 west) has a lot of Bosnian, Serbian, Croatian products including very interesting wines from Romania, Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro etc. all the way into Georgia.

Very worth checking out as they have a full butcher dept. as well as produce, canned goods and the aforementioned wine. They bake a variety of breads as well. Don't be fooled by the pre-fab Cuisine de France stuff. They also produce some dense, chewy, oily, salty Balkan loaves of their own.

There is also a balkan bakery almost directly across the street on the south side of Devon.

I'm looking to buy a cevapcici press. I saw one in a video today, found it on Amazon.uk, but it was £19 plus shipping. Ouf. Anyone ever seen one of these on this side of the pond??

TIA!

Geo

Hi C2--

Tnx! Yes, that video is where I first saw the press. It's available in the UK at an exorbitant price ($20+, plus shipping) on Amazon. But I'd like to find it here in the States, where it might be cheaper, and for sure the shipping would be less.

Geo

Hi,

Balkan Grill has discontinued offering a smoked pork sausage in a narrow lamb casing called: rostiljske kobasice. Kobasice is Serb-Croatian for sausage.

I am hoping it is offered in a Balkan deli or restaurant. I am quite tempted to make it, if I cannot find it. I have already found some recipes and videos, though I would be happy just to buy it.

If you see it, please let me know.

Regards,
Cathy2

There is a Balkan Bakery and Cafe in downtown Lombard.

Balkan Bakery & Cafe
14 w. St. Charles Ave.
Lombard, IL 60148
http://www.balkanbakerycafe.com/menu

Highly endorsed by the LTHN(Dinner)Group:

Balkan Taste
2354 Elmhurst Rd.
Mt Prospect, IL 60056
https://www.balkantaste.net/

Ms. Ingie wrote:There is a Balkan Bakery and Cafe in downtown Lombard.

Balkan Bakery & Cafe
14 w. St. Charles Ave.
Lombard, IL 60148
http://www.balkanbakerycafe.com/menu

No rostiljska kobasica as far as I can tell.

Dave148 wrote:Highly endorsed by the LTHN(Dinner)Group:

Balkan Taste
2354 Elmhurst Rd.
Mt Prospect, IL 60056
https://www.balkantaste.net/

No rostiljska kobasica as far as I can tell.

I think many consider Sandy's Deli on Lawrence to be one of the better Balkan (Serbian) markets in Chicago. They also sell prepared food, including rostiljska kobasica (not sure about current status).


Photo by owner, posted on Yelp.

Sandy's carries two types of rostiljska kobasica (dimljena means smoked).

Sandy's Bakery & Deli
5857 W Lawrence Av
Chicago
773-794-1129
https://www.sandysbakeryanddeli.com/

ReneG,

Exactly what I was hoping to find, now I just have to find a reason to visit.

Thanks!

Regards,
CAthy2

I'm glad to hear that Sandy's is still open. I had it in my head that they had closed. Go on the weekend for their roast meats. I believe their associated restaurant on higgins, however is closed.

Lately, I've liked Rokka Bakehouse - 7942 Ogden Ave #1, Lyons, IL. Lotsa good stuff both prepared and imported.

The place on Lawrence, just off of Harlem remains good through several incarnations. Google says the current name is Domaci Bakery - 7316 W Lawrence Ave, Harwood Heights, IL

Don't discount City Fresh at what is it Kedzie? and Devon. Grocery store too, but at heart a Balkan deli, etc.