22 Best Balkan Restaurants In The US

A recent car commercial shows a couple who aren't too excited about what they might eat for lunch. They're blasé about the possibility of sushi, Thai, and Indian food, but finally, settle on tacos (another familiar food option) after nearly rear-ending a food truck. If you, too, are looking to change things up, there's no need to arrange an accident. Instead, it may be time to try Balkan cuisine. While this type of food is not yet a strip mall staple, it can be found in a growing number of restaurants around the U.S. and is long overdue for some well-deserved recognition.

The Balkans as a region is generally thought to encompass the countries of Albania, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Slovenia, and Serbia, per Brittanica. Not all of the Balkan nations are equally well represented on the American culinary scene, though. While there are a number of Serbian and Bosnian restaurants, there are fewer Bulgarian ones and a mere handful of the others — not a handful apiece, a handful if you clump them all together. Unfortunately, we couldn't find any Montenegran restaurants featuring kačamak, brav u mlijeku, or Njeguški steak on the menu, but pan-Balkan dishes such as ćevapi and bureks are typical for that country, as well.

Balkan Treat Box has received quite a bit of media attention for a Midwestern restaurant specializing in a lesser-known European cuisine as its website touts accolades from Food & Wine, Bon Appetit, Esquire, and Food Network, and one of its chefs was a James Beard semifinalist. While the restaurant offers a limited menu for dine-in or takeout (and even mail order by way of Goldbelly), what it does, it does very well.

Among the Balkan treats on offer are ćevapi, pljeskavica, and sopska (aka shopska) salad. It also has a few Turkish treats which are actually not too out of place here. According to Britannica, the very word Balkans is Turkish (it means mountain), and parts of Turkey lie on the Balkan peninsula. The Turkish menu items at Balkan Treat Box include doner kebabs, wrap sandwiches known as lahmacun, and the flatbread pizza called pide. For dessert, there's sutlija, a very pretty rice pudding decorated with rose petals and pistachios, and the beverage list includes Balkan beer and the Turkish yogurt drink called ayran.

While Cafe Beograd specializes in Serbian food, Beograd (aka Belgrade) being that country's capital, the website also says it does "regional Balkan" cuisine. It is one of the more well-established restaurants on the list, having been in business since 1984, so at almost 40 years old, it's practically ancient in restaurant years.

If you're a fan of charcuterie boards, be sure to order the meze at Cafe Beograd. This includes a selection of smoked meats and cheeses, and the BG meze also includes ajvar as well as the spicy cheese salad called urnebes. The menu is pretty meat-heavy (Serbians do love their meat), with cevapchichi (ćevapi), pljeskavica, a cheese-and-bacon-stuffed karadjordje's schnitzel, and raznjici, which are chicken or pork skewers. There is also a wide range of crepes with both savory and sweet fillings, as well as other dessert offerings such as the chocolate and vanilla cake known as ledena kocka and the Balkan-style cream puffs called princess krofna.

If you visit Çka Ka Qëllu, though, you'll be treated to some of the best (and possibly only-est) Albanian and Kosovar cuisines you're likely to find anywhere outside of, well, Albania or Kosovo, with the possible exception of Gjyshja's house if you happen to have roots in either of these countries.

So what does Albanian/Kosovar cuisine look like? Some of the dishes on Çka Ka Qëllu's menu are similar to ones you'll see throughout the Balkans, albeit with a different spelling: ajavar (ajvar) shop (shopska) salad, and sausages called qebapa that seem pretty similar to ćevapi. The restaurant does offer a number of Albanian specialties, such as lecenik, a cornbread made with cottage cheese and spinach that The New York Times praises for its almost cheesecake-like texture. There are also several veal-based dishes, including the baked veal dumplings called mantia në tavë, the sausage known as suxhuk, and qofte, which are meatballs flavored with onions, herbs, and crushed red pepper. The dessert menu has a few Albanian specialties, as well, including the sweet pastry known as sheqerpare and trilece.

Mehanata offers Bulgarian cuisine served in a setting heavy on old-world ambiance. The romantic atmosphere would actually be perfect for an anniversary or Valentine's dinner. You could also make it a breakfast date, as the restaurant serves three meals a day — the two of you could start off your day with yogurt-poached eggs panagurski or Bulgarian donuts that come with both feta cheese and jam.

One of Mehanata's lunch and dinner specialties is shashlik, which is skewer-grilled beef, pork, chicken, and/or sausage. The restaurant also offers a variety of traditional clay pot dishes known as sach, with available combos including kasapski sach made with bacon, chicken, pork, sausage, mushrooms, onions, peppers, and pickles; mehanata sach, which is pork or chicken cooked with bacon, mushrooms, onions, pickles, and french fries; and rodokski sach, which includes pork or chicken, carrots, corn, mushrooms, onions, and pickles. There's even a vegetarian sach made from carrots, corn, dill, mushrooms, onions, pickles, and zucchini. Do try to save room for dessert, though. The house specialty is a cake made from figs and mascarpone, while there are various other Bulgarian cakes to choose from.

Miro Terzic is a restauranteur and culinary star from Mostar in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He opened his namesake Palm Springs eatery, Miro's, in 1994 with the intent to offer a menu influenced not only by his Balkan background, but by culinary traditions from Hungary, Germany, and the overall Mediterranean, as well.

Although Miro's offerings currently range from Moroccan lamb meatballs to osso bucco to Spanish octopus and even Budapest-style schnitzel, there are a few typical Balkan dishes on the menu. One of these is burek, which here comes stuffed with ground beef, potatoes, and onions, and the other is cabbage rolls. Stuffed cabbage rolls are pretty popular across eastern Europe, with variants including Ukrainian holubtsi and Polish golumpki, but Miro's version is described as being a "family recipe from the old country," which means it's likely to be a Bosnian-style dish you'll not find elsewhere.

Rakija Lounge is a Serbian-ish restaurant and bar in that much of what's on offer is standard American fare such as pizza, wings, fajitas, and surf and turf, but there are a number of Serbian specialties, as well. Serbian items pop up here and there on the menu — the doughnuts known as ustipci are a breakfast option, shopska is one of the salad choices, and burek is listed as both an appetizer and a sandwich. There is also a selection of "Mediterranean" entrees that include ćevapi, karadjordjeva schnitzel, pljeskavica, sarma, and sudzukice, this last-named being a type of beef and veal sausages.

The real specialty at Rakija Lounge, however, is the eponymous Serbian fruit brandy that the restaurant describes as being both "strong and dainty." The rakija it serves is made in-house and comes in a variety of styles. The ones on offer at present include dunjevaca (quince), kajsijevaca (apricot), loza (aged grape), viljamovka (pear), and sljivovica (plum), the last of which is considered to be Serbia's national drink.

The Croats and Serbs may have fought a bloody, not-so-civil war back in the '90s as the former Yugoslavia was tearing itself apart, but nearly three decades later, one restaurant in Queens is trying to re-unite the two south Slavic nations under the umbrella of a single menu. Selo's proprietors, Croatian Elvis and his Serbian wife Suzana, aren't exactly the Balkan version of Romeo and Juliet as they actually met in the U.S. long after the war was over, but to this day, their restaurant is the only one in the U.S. to specialize in both Serbian and Croatian cuisine.

As the restaurateurs told The Plitvice Times, Selo is meant to showcase both the more Mediterranean-influenced, seafood-based Croatian cuisine as well as the meatier Serbian style of cooking, as the former would be unfamiliar to immigrants from the latter country and vice-versa, while both types of food would likely be new to non-Balkan customers. The most popular menu items at Selo are the Serbian karadordjeva and the Croatian Istrian gnocchi with shrimp, while other entrees include calamari stuffed with potatoes and Swiss chard, grilled octopus, bow-tie pasta in a veal ragu sauce. ćevapi, and a cheese-and-bacon-filled ground meat dish called gurmanska.

Sofra Urbana, a restaurant featuring the foods of Bosnia-Hercegovina, takes its name from a traditional Bosnian serving platter. The sofra, the restaurateurs say, is meant to symbolize family-style dining and the restaurant's stated hope is that customers will feel as if they are guests in a Bosnian home. As Bosnia is a country with a large Muslim population, all of the meat served by the restaurant (and there is a lot of it, since Bosnians are just as fond of the stuff as are their neighbors, the Serbs) is halal-certified.

Sofra Urbana's menu offers such pan-Balkan dishes as ćevapi, pljeskavica, shopska salad, and burek. The Sofra burger is a bit more Bosnia-specific, though, as it consists of a patty stuffed with Bosnian dried meat and cheese. Bosnian charcuterie also features on the pizzas, particularly the Balkan Special topped with suho meso (smoked beef), soyuk (salami), and kaymak cheese.

The Balkan House is, if not exactly a full-fledged chain, that rare Balkan restaurant that has successfully spun itself off into two separate locations. While Balkan is in the restaurant's name, it promotes itself as offering "a taste of Europe." Apparently, this taste is one that extends well beyond the Balkan peninsula, and in some cases outside of Europe itself.

On the menu at Balkan House are all of the usual suspects: pleskavica, shopska salad, and chevapi, this last available as part of a breakfast wrap or platter as well as on the main menu. The restaurant also makes Bosnian bean soup known as grah. Other menu items include Middle Eastern favorites like falafel, Turkish coffee, and a fava bean breakfast dish called foul which is similar to the Egyptian dish called ful medames. The house specialty, however, seems to be döner kebabs, which are Turkish in origin but a favorite street food in Germany. The Balkan House acknowledges that its kebabs (also available in a basket, bowl, salad, or wrap form) are Berlin-style and even spells the word with the Germanic umlaut.

Three Brothers Restaurant is one of two Milwaukee-based Serbian restaurants with a long pedigree. It dates back to 1956, but one of the brothers for which it was named eventually split off from the family business to found Old Town Serbian Gourmet 15 years later. Both restaurants today are still run by Radicevics, although the Old Town ones now spell their name with an "h" at the end, while the Three Brothers ones do not.

Three Brothers, of course, offers typical Serbian dishes like chevapchichi, pleskjavica, raznjici, sarma, and burek on the menu, this last-named being stuffed with a choice of beef, cheese, or cheese and spinach. The menu also features roast goose, duck, and lamb, while desserts include palacinka, strudel, and a seven-layer fruit and walnut-filled torte. While the menu is typically Balkan in its heavy use of meat and dairy, Three Brothers says it can prepare vegetarian or even vegan versions of certain dishes if given 36 hours notice.

Zivio offers what it calls "modern European cuisine," but the website goes on to clarify that what is meant by this is basically Bosnian with some Greek, Turkish, and Central European influences as is typical of the region. A look at the menu, though, shows quite a few dishes that seem to fit the New American profile, as well, such as za'atar-seasoned Brussels sprouts with a honey/harissa glaze and a trio of tacos made with naan bread.

We're here for the Balkan food, though, so we'll take a closer look at the menu to find those items. Ćevapi puts in an appearance, along with ajvar and kajmak, while lepinja bread not only accompanies the ćevapi but is used for several different sandwiches and dips. Zivio even uses this traditional bread to make a not-so-traditional dessert called lepinja puffs where pieces of the stuff are deep-fried, sprinkled with cinnamon sugar, and drizzled with Nutella. The drinks menu, too, has several Balkan beverages including Bosnian beers; wines from Bosnia, Croatia, North Macedonia, and Romania; cocktails made with rakija and the Croatian pear liqueur kruskovac; and Slovenian mineral water called Radenska.