Food & Drink in the Balkans

About Food & Drink in the Balkans

By the ULTIMATE Editorial Team

Editor-in-Chief: Jai Michael

Balkan food is history you can taste. This is our guide to the shared table of south-eastern Europe, its cafés and its rakija, with links to the in-depth food stories on each of our Balkan city guides.

The shared table

Start at the table, because everybody here does. Across the Balkans a meal is the main event of the day, served generously and meant to be shared: bread and kajmak on the table before you have chosen anything, a salad to begin, something from the charcoal grill or the slow pot, and a small glass of rakija to finish. Many dishes cross every border, and every town makes them its own way, which is half the pleasure.

Empires on the plate

Balkan food tells the story of the empires that met here. In the north and west, in Zagreb and Ljubljana, the cooking carries a Viennese accent: breaded schnitzel (Zagreb’s version, zagrebački odrezak, is stuffed with ham and cheese), potato salad, and strudel layered with apple, cheese or poppy seed. Head south and east, through Belgrade, Sarajevo and Skopje, and the Ottoman influence takes over: charcoal grills turning out ćevapi and pljeskavica, slow stews and soups, stuffed peppers and vine leaves, and pastries soaked in syrup and walnuts. Along the coast, the Adriatic adds its own chapter: grilled fish, olive oil, black risotto and wine.

Many dishes cross every border, and every town makes them its own way.

Some things are shared by everyone: the salad of tomato, cucumber and onion under grated white cheese, šopska salata; ajvar, the roasted red pepper relish made at home every autumn; burek and pita, warm from the bakery in the morning; and kajmak, the rich clotted cream that goes on almost everything.

Then every country adds its own. Tirana’s dish is fërgesë, green and red peppers and tomatoes cooked down with gjizë, a fresh cottage cheese, and baked in a clay dish; North Macedonia’s is tavče gravče, beans baked in a clay dish of their own. In Slovenia, lunch at a gostilna might be Carniolan sausage and štruklji, finished with dark pumpkin-seed oil from Styria; in Zagreb, it is roast turkey with mlinci; and on the road from Cetinje to the coast in Montenegro, it is Njeguši ham and cheese.

In Ljubljana, on Fridays from spring to autumn, the Open Kitchen fills Pogačarjev trg beside the Central Market with street food, the easiest way to taste the whole country in a single afternoon.

The café

Coffee in the Balkans is not something you carry down the street. It is a reason to sit down. From the Viennese-style cafés of Zagreb and Ljubljana to the old kafanas of Belgrade and the coffee houses of Sarajevo’s Baščaršija, the café is where the city meets itself, and where people practise what Bosnians call ćeif: the pleasure of taking your time.

In Sarajevo, Bosnian coffee arrives in a small copper džezva on a tray, with a fildžan cup, a cube of sugar and a piece of rahat lokum. Elsewhere it might be an espresso on a terrace under the plane trees. Either way, the tables fill with every generation: students with laptops, friends putting the world to rights, and, in parks and squares across the region, older men bent over chessboards while a small crowd offers unsolicited advice. In summer, musicians drift between terraces, children play in the squares late into the evening, and nobody hurries you for the table.

From the water

Near the water, lunch comes from it: sea bream and squid on the coast, carp and catfish by the rivers, finished simply with olive oil, garlic and parsley. On Lake Skadar in Montenegro, carp is baked with dried plums and apples, and along the Bay of Kotor the fish stew, brodet, comes with polenta.

Wine and rakija

Wine has been made here since antiquity, and the region grows grape varieties you’ll find almost nowhere else, from Vranac in Montenegro and North Macedonia to Žilavka in Herzegovina and Prokupac in Serbia. But the spirit of the Balkans is rakija, the fruit brandy distilled in copper stills in villages across the region each autumn. Šljivovica, made from plums, is the best known; there is also dunjevača from quince, kajsijevača from apricot and viljamovka from Williams pears, and along the coast, loza, made from grapes.

Rakija is hospitality in a glass. It is poured to welcome guests, to toast weddings and births, to seal a deal and to remember those who are gone. When a small glass is put in front of you, accept it: it is a handshake.

In Albania it is raki, the national drink, offered as a welcome almost everywhere, with a bottle of Kallmet or Shesh i Zi, wines made from native grapes, at dinner.

Where to go next

Each of our Balkan guides has its own in-depth food story, with the dishes to try and the kitchens and markets our editors trust.

Our advice

Our advice: eat what the next table is eating, order the bread and kajmak, leave room for something sweet with your coffee, and when the rakija comes, accept it. Then use our city guides to find the kitchens our editors trust.

Festival dates, opening times and seasonal services change, so please check with each place directly.