Balkan Streat Opens in Manhattan

Balkan Streat, a new rapid-casual street food stuff joint serving burek, yeasted doughnuts, cevapi, and Balkan-model burgers, opens nowadays, January 24, at 353 Sixth Avenue, close to West Washington Put, in Greenwich Village. The counter-service cafe comes from William Djuric, an alum of Bouchon Bakery, Gramercy Tavern, and Momofuku Ssam Bar.

After decades of operating in the enjoyment marketplace, Djuric pivoted to culinary university following the death of his father. Djuric is of Serbian descent, and with Balkan Streat he’s partnering with Jason Correa, a longtime operational alum of the TAO Team, to develop a menu that pays homage to his heritage, remixed for the existing quick-casual landscape. The duo has brought in Milan Milijancevic, a Serbian baker from Belgrade’s Lodge Moskva to lead the Balkan baked items plan.

The end result is a menu that pulls jointly both equally common and contemporary Balkan-style recipes that are personalized to Djuric. “My father passing and my wife also currently being from that location, it reconnected me with my roots, and this was a way to do that,” he says. “I may possibly not completely converse the language, rising up 50 percent Serbian, but I can communicate the foods.”

Set up like an all-working day cafe, the menu is break up into many categories: In the grill portion, there’s cevapi (Balkan-model kebabs, sans sticks), with variations like the Belgrade (pork and veal) and Sarajevo versions (beef and lamb), served with onions, cabbage, and ajvar. There is also pljeskavica, a Balkan-model beef burger with onions, and a stuffed model with kashkaval cheese and ham. Throughout lunch and meal, there are also additional developed-out plates, like stuffed pork schnitzel rolls with kashkaval cheese, goulash, and sarma, which are stuffed cabbage rolls with floor pork.

From the baked items, Balkan Streat wished to offer a morning alternate as ubiquitous croissants they’re displayed in a heated get ‘n go situation. Within there’s the vintage phyllo-fashion burek (there are fillings like feta cheese, pickled cabbage and paprika, roasted crimson pepper, and cheeseburger), every single served with a dill or paprika yogurt dip. “Whenever I’m in Belgrade, burek is my favorite for breakfast, it is tangy, tacky — so I am hoping folks will react to that.”

The cafe will also serve yeasted doughnuts identified as krofne, with flavors like raspberry, pistachio, or Nutella. Down the line, they’re functioning on much more nontraditional flavors.

A liquor license will kick-in in the coming weeks.

The interior counter area of Balkan Streat. — Within Balkan Streat, which is open in Greenwich Village. An East Village sibling is to follow.

The restaurant has a capacity of 20, which a agent describes as owning a “sculptural Brutalist kiosk” and murals of Balkan record. Inspite of Djuric’s cafe pedigree, he wanted open up with a quickly-everyday structure not only to honor road food but also in a nod to how a lot more New Yorkers are eating now.

Elements of Queens have no scarcity of Balkan places to eat, but Balkan Streat is distinct for Manhattan, wherever the region’s food stuff is underrepresented: “This project has been going on prior to I even realized it would take place. I spent my life each individual summer months going to Serbia. The foods we’re heading to be developing is my childhood reminiscences of wishing there ended up much more locations I could to get foods like that in New York City,” says Djuric.

As for the identify by itself, a region marked by strife, Djuric felt it was vital to admit that however his father is Serbian, the food has roots in all of the Balkans, which contains countries like Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Albania: “Though all of our peoples may possibly have not received alongside traditionally, our food stuff is a way for us to link, I wished everybody in the region to feel represented.”

Before even opening Balkan Streat in Greenwich Village, Djuric has already signed on a next space in the East Village, at 145 2nd Avenue, at East Ninth Street, which he describes as currently being more total-services, even though nevertheless informal, with large structure plates. He’s hoping to open in the spring.

It is portion of Djuric’s much larger targets for Balkan Streat he’s betting on Balkan “being the following huge thing” in NYC rapid informal.

Balkan Streat Greenwich Village is 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., from Tuesday by way of Sunday to begin.