Balkan Streat Opens in Manhattan

Balkan Streat, a new rapidly-relaxed avenue food stuff joint serving burek, yeasted doughnuts, cevapi, and Balkan-style burgers, opens right now, January 24, at 353 Sixth Avenue, close to West Washington Spot, in Greenwich Village. The counter-services cafe comes from William Djuric, an alum of Bouchon Bakery, Gramercy Tavern, and Momofuku Ssam Bar.

After a long time of doing the job in the leisure sector, Djuric pivoted to culinary school next 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 create a menu that pays homage to his heritage, remixed for the recent rapidly-relaxed landscape. The duo has brought in Milan Milijancevic, a Serbian baker from Belgrade’s Lodge Moskva to direct the Balkan baked merchandise software.

The end result is a menu that pulls collectively both equally traditional and modern day Balkan-model recipes that are personalized to Djuric. “My father passing and my spouse also staying from that area, it reconnected me with my roots, and this was a way to do that,” he claims. “I may possibly not thoroughly discuss the language, expanding up 50 percent Serbian, but I can communicate the meals.”

Max Flatow/Balkan Streat

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

From the baked goods, Balkan Streat desired to give a early morning alternative as ubiquitous croissants they are shown in a heated seize ‘n go circumstance. Inside there’s the vintage phyllo-model 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 most loved for breakfast, it is tangy, tacky — so I am hoping folks will answer to that.”

The cafe will also provide yeasted doughnuts termed krofne, with flavors like raspberry, pistachio, or Nutella. Down the line, they are working on extra nontraditional flavors.

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

Max Flatow/Balkan Streat

The restaurant has a capacity of 20, which a consultant describes as owning a “sculptural Brutalist kiosk” and murals of Balkan background. Inspite of Djuric’s restaurant pedigree, he required open with a speedy-casual format not only to honor street food stuff but also in a nod to how extra New Yorkers are dining now.

Elements of Queens have no shortage of Balkan eating places, but Balkan Streat is distinctive for Manhattan, where by the region’s food items is underrepresented: “This undertaking has been going on in advance of I even knew it would occur. I invested my daily life each and every summer months going to Serbia. The food we’re likely to be developing is my childhood reminiscences of wishing there were additional areas I could to get food like that in New York Town,” suggests Djuric.

As for the name itself, a region marked by strife, Djuric felt it was critical to admit that although his father is Serbian, the food items has roots in all of the Balkans, which includes nations like Croatia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Albania: “Though all of our peoples may possibly have not got along historically, our food items is a way for us to connect, I wished anyone in the area to sense represented.”

Just before even opening Balkan Streat in Greenwich Village, Djuric has now signed on a next room in the East Village, at 145 2nd Avenue, at East Ninth Road, which he describes as remaining far more total-support, however however relaxed, with substantial structure plates. He’s hoping to open in the spring.

It’s aspect of Djuric’s larger aims for Balkan Streat he’s betting on Balkan “being the following significant thing” in NYC quick casual.

Balkan Streat Greenwich Village is 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., from Tuesday through Sunday to start off.

Max Flatow/Balkan Streat

Max Flatow/Balkan Streat

Max Flatow/Balkan Streat

A range of dishes together with goulash, sausage rolls, and stuffed rolled schnitzel.