Inside My Table #85 | Excerpt
Dining Without Borders—A Good Sausage Is Worth It
By Dennis Abrams
Bosnia is a place that, for most people, recalls mostly forgotten history lessons: Ottomans, Austria-Hungary, the creation of Yugoslavia, the breakup of Yugoslavia, genocide … Hillary Clinton’s visit to the airport. And while its bloody history is important, what’s interesting to me is how this history has influenced its food. Take a look at a menu in a Bosnian restaurant and you’ll see its history right on the page: Foods of the native Slavs, Turkish food, paprika from Hungary and feta and olives from Greece all come together to create a cuisine that should be better known, because it’s really good.
Houston has two Bosnian restaurants, Cafe Pita + and Balkan Grill. (If there are others, please let me know.) I went to these restaurants not knowing quite what to expect, but in both cases I left wondering how soon I’d be able to return. The food, which tends to be quite hearty (“heavy,” many would argue), seems somehow familiar and comforting. It’s heavy on the meat — vegetarians, you’ve been warned — bread and even more meat. But if you’re looking for something different and have a serious hankering for sausage, you will be happy.
Cafe Pita + is a real charmer of a restaurant. Small, cozy and comfortable, hidden away in a strip mall just outside the Beltway, it seems pretty near the Platonic ideal of the little “ethnic” restaurant that foodies are always on the hunt for. The service goes along with the whole feel of the place — eager to please and informative.
There were five of us at dinner, including one vegetarian. We started with a meze plate (a gift from the Turks), but instead of hummus and tabbouleh, it came loaded with traditional cured meats and sausage (one selection, pastrma, is like the darkest, best-tasting pastrami you’ll ever find), a particularly tangy Bosnian feta, olives and hot peppers. Accompanying the platter is kajmak (a gloriously rich mixture of feta, cream cheese and sour cream that comes alongside pretty much every dish on the menu and makes pretty much everything taste even better), ajvar (a relish, or salsa if you will, of roasted red peppers, eggplant and a few chilies) and still warm pieces of freshly baked lepinja, the traditional Bosnian bread. After just a few minutes on the table, the platter was completely stripped clean of all but a few stray crumbs.
I also ordered the fried cheese, much to the obvious dismay of my tablemates who seemed plagued with visions of some sort of frozen, pre-fab mozzarella sticks. They needn’t have worried. Here the cheese is slabs of a fresh halloumi-style cheese, lightly floured and sautéed, and it is scrumptious. As also was the Bosnic groh, a brown bean soup loaded with bits of sausage that somehow managed to be far less heavy than it sounds.
Then the entrees began to arrive. We had pita burek — cigar-shaped phyllo pastries, one filled with beef, the other with spinach — cut into big pieces. While the pastry could perhaps have been flakier and warmer, the fillings more than made up for it. We also had fresh grilled sardines in lieu of the anchovies that were already sold out. Everybody else at the table really enjoyed them, but they were a wee bit fishy for my taste.
Then arrived the dish that the meat eaters (I among them) agreed was the best of the night, cevap. These juicy sausages arrived tucked into a large round of split, buttered and toasted lepinja. The cevap were ever so slightly fatty and nicely spiced. To eat it (it’s too big and bulky to pick up like a sandwich), one tears off a piece of bread, grabs a sausage, and then garnishes it with some raw chopped onion and a dairy shmear of kajmak. Perfection.
We liked the desserts, too: krempita (a vanilla pudding) and palacini (warm crêpes filled with Nutella, then drizzled with warm caramel sauce and sprinkled with toasted walnuts).
At Balkan Grill, located further west on Westheimer past Eldridge, the setting is larger and more elaborate, with a menu that’s also larger and more elaborate. Here we tried two soups: begova corbra, a creamy soup made with chopped meat, rice and vegetables, and bosanksi lonac, a heartier stew made from beef, lamb and cabbage, with a lovely slightly sweet and sour flavor. Both soups benefited from a little extra salt at the table, and I liked them both.
Balkan Grill’s fried cheese, pohovani kackavalj, looked like the usual run-of-the-mill fried cheese stick, but was anything but. The homemade cheese is coated with a breading spiked with caraway seeds, and it’s served, curiously enough, with a side of tartar sauce. The combination works very well.
There’s no seafood on the menu at Balkan Grill, and there are even fewer options for vegetarians, but the pita sirnica (baked homemade phyllo dough filled with cheese, eggs and sour cream) proved a satisfying meal. My vegetarian friend also had the cabbage salad, made with what seemed to be about five pounds of cabbage tossed with vinegar and olive oil — cole slaw, in other words.
The meat eaters had cevapi leskovacki, which was similar to the cevap dish at Cafe Pita +, but with spicier sausages. At our waiter’s suggestion, we also had the punjene paprike, stuffed peppers to be precise. They were nicely filled with ground beef and covered with a tasty tomato sauce, but were still just stuffed peppers. I wished I’d tried the gulas instead, a gift from the Hungarians that was probably worth trying.
Weeks after eating at these restaurants, I find myself longing for a return visit. The problem for me is that both places are located out in the far reaches of West Houston, making it a bit of an effort to get there. Still, for hot grilled sausages with homemade bread, kajmak and onion, it’s worth the schlep.
CAFE PITA +
10890 Westheimer, bet. Beltway 8 & Wilcrest, 713-953-7237
TIPS Cafe Pita + does not have a liquor license, but there’s a place next door to get wine or beer. And across the way from the restaurant the management also runs a Bosnian food shop, stocked with cheese, olives, cured meats and baked goods.
BALKAN GRILL
14045 Westheimer, bet. Eldridge & Highway 6, 281-759-9961
TIP Balkan Grill has a full bar and a selection of Balkan wines. I tried the Croatian red Bibic Riserva. Don’t make the same mistake I did. If you’re curious, spring for an extra $4 and try the Bibic Mantra.
