That looks a lot like potica, a recipe from Slovenia that I used to make quite often but haven’t had in more than 20 years. Yeast dough rolled up with a walnut-honey-spice filling baked in a tube pan or bundt pan. Yum. I’ll have to make that again soon.
Columbus? I’m not too far from there now, hit me up when it’s close to the fest time. 
Also, the Orthodox do not proselytize, like, at all, unless you’re thinking of marrying in. Just like Jewish. And even then it’s not easy to convert, or even assimilate if you’re half-assed raised in it like me. Just go and have a good time, and I’ll show you a few poor kolo steps if I end up there.
Yep. There’s a number of variants of that type of rolled dough with poppyseed or walnut filling from Poland well down through the Balkans/former Yugoslavia, and I assume much beyond.
With Elemenopy"s “cookbook” mention: probably little direct help here; but this thread had me looking out a small but interesting cookbook (published in the UK) which I have, on “Romanian, Bulgarian and Balkan” cuisine. Includes some seventy recipes (a lot of them seeming very enticing): many identified as Romanian or Bulgarian, most others implied as “generic” to the Balkan peninsula – a few identified as from particular parts of the former Yugoslavia (as PPs here figure, seemingly a strong “family” likeness among foods from various Balkan lands).
The only recipe in the book specifically referred to as Serbian, is a rather splendid-sounding meat loaf involving beef, pork, and bacon; though other things mentioned in this thread, appear too: the small grilled skinless sausages, and the eggplant [aubergine] / pepper spread, “ajvar”, though not there referred to by that name.
Re the river fish element: my cookbook as referred to, has a couple of recipes (exact country unattributed) for carp dishes – one of which I’ve tried making, and reckoned good. I feel that there’s a tendency cuisine-wise in some parts of the world, to underrate freshwater fish – dismissing it as lacking in taste / tending to a “muddy” taste, and beset with small bones. There are ways of coping with these traits: assorted recipes can make carp, for example, delicious. (The people of my own surrounded-by-the-sea country tend nonetheless, to conservative tastes overall as regards creatures living in water; and in the main, unfairly dismiss and despise freshwater fish.)
The eggplant/pepper spread shows up under varying names, and slightly different preparations, in that part of the world. Perhaps it was under zacusca, the Romanian version, pindjur or lutenica (also Balkans), or kjopolou, the Bulgarian variant, etc. The proportion and presence of various ingredients can vary. For example, at my grocery, the difference between ajvar and pindjur seems to be the presence of tomatoes in the latter. Looking online at various recipes in their original language from that area, that seems to be the case. However, Wikipedia seems to say that in some places, they are used interchangeably, and also that pindjur is more an eggplant spread with red peppers, and ajvar more a red pepper spread that sometimes has eggplants. Once again, looking at recipes from the area, that does seem to be correct. Ajvar recipes are often given without eggplant. This is a little surprise to me, as the ajvar I’ve had typically does contain eggplant, and I always make it with eggplant myself.
My book’s recipe – just called “Aubergine and Pepper Spread”, nothing stated as to origin from where in the region – does feature tomatoes. Basically, for 6 – 8 people, it lists one and a half pounds “eggp. / aub”, 2 green peppers, 2 ripe tomatoes – pus garlic and parsley. It would seem that this very modest cookbook only scratches the surface of what the Balkan peninsula can come up with !
There’s also similarities (and I’d bet a common ancestor) with matbucha (if that isn’t the common ancestor itself), the Moroccan/North African/Middle Eastern spread/“salad” of tomatoes, bell peppers, and garlic.
Beograd Cafe on Irving Park?
Hmmm. It looks like it’s been around since 1984, so the timeline checks out (this would have been 1997 when I visited), but I don’t remember it being on the corner of a major street like that, and I don’t remember it having big shop windows like that. But my memory is not great. For some reason, I feel like it was in the middle of the block somewhere, and perhaps more specifically a Bosnian restaurant than Serbian. I’m thinking I probably found it in a book called “Insider’s Guide to Chicago,” which I may even have lying around the house somewhere. I see there’s a Restaurant Sarajevo at that general part of town, and it does ring a bell, but, once again, the pictures of the outside of it don’t really ring a bell. (And I can’t tell if it was around in 1997).
For all I know, though, it may very well be Beograd Cafe and my memory is just hazy. It’s not an unlikely possibility.
Looking online through the Trib’s archives, I think it may have been Cafe Continental (which doesn’t exist anymore) that billed itself as a Croatian restaurant. That sounds about right. And was at 5517 N. Lincoln, so that does fit the middle-of-the-block memory I have. Plus the name rings a bell.
The timeline is a bit tight, though. Looks like by July of 1997 it became a Korean night club. But I would have been there probably the winter (Jan/Feb) of 1997, right after returning from a spell in the Balkans.
ETA: Actually, no, the timeline doesn’t work. It opened up as a night club in 1996. Unless my timeline of going there after, rather than before, my trip to the Balkans is incorrect.
Then again, it’s possible I went there in early 1996 before my trip, but I think it’s unlikely that I would have been seeking out Yugoslav food at the time. (Not impossible, but my memory is that I went there to re-experience the region’s cuisine, not discover it for the first time.) Damn middle age memory.
I dated a Serb for a few years and travelled there several times, so I got to have the Real Thing. As a vegetarian I was totally limited to sides and starters, but fortunately, they take their sides and starters seriously there - I never had trouble finding something delicious and filling to eat.
Burek remains my true love.
Interesting – I’d always been given to understand that a vegetarian’s lot in Eastern Europe was not a happy one. Clearly, it depends where in Eastern Europe !
With the traditional food, I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s difficult to find something vegetarian to eat in Eastern Europe, it’s just that the variety is fairly limited and you have to be careful because even things that sound vegetarian may be made on chicken stock or fried in lard (or contain lard in the dough.) And if you’re vegan, that’s really rough, with butter, cheese, sour cream, being used in much of the Eastern European cuisine.
That said, it’s certainly gotten much better in the region over the past few years. In the 90s, being vegan was pretty tough and I know many who simply switched to a “flexarian” diet to accommodate. Now, most, if not all, of the major cities seem to have vegan options. My experience is mostly from Budapest, where it used to be a nightmare to be a vegan, and now you can have lists just narrowing the vegan options to the ten.
Plus Serbia is more what I would call Southern Europe, and they have all that Turkish/Greek influence, so you find stuff like the roasted vegetable spreads mentioned above, the phyllo-type dough concoctions (burek) stuffed with cheese or spinach and cheese (zeljanica), etc. So if you’re happy being a vegetarian in a Greek restaurant, you should be fine.
oh! If it so I’m going to try it!
Re myself, it would require desperately extreme circumstances to make me a vegetarian. Just, I seem to have gathered from guidebooks – “Lonely Planet” and such – that at any rate further north in Eastern Europe, in general folk just don’t “get” vegetarianism; which can at times make things difficult there for one who “abstains from eating anything that had a face”. Per you here, in the Balkan Peninsula it’s a different ball-game, working out as more veggy-friendly.
I don’t remember it being particularly that much better with the traditional food in the Balkans. I lived for a few months in Croatia in a Serb-Croat town not far from the Bosnian border, and I can’t really say it was easier finding vegetarian options than it was in, say, Poland. I mean, they exist–there just wasn’t a huge variety of them. Today, I expect you’d be fine with finding vegetarian or vegan food in Warsaw, Prague, and Belgrade.
I visited Old Town a few times when I was a kid and am reminded of it every once in a while. I always wondered whether the bureks were as good as I remember, and now that you brought this up I will definitely go back next time we are in town.
I don’t recall seeing Serbian food in other cities, but then again, I don’t know if I ever would have stumbled upon Old Town either, even after years of living there.
I like cevapici. And I prefer crab juice to Mountain Dew with Khlav Kulash.