Balkan Wave

▪ It’s the year of cevapi. This hearty, comforting sandwich—made with small grilled sausages tucked into somun or lepinja (chewy flatbread) and decked out with onions, kajmak (clotted cream), and ajvar (a robust red pepper–eggplant spread) — has been popping up at a recent crop of newschool Balkan restaurants. You’ll find it all over: from Doma, a Croatian-inspired café, to Rose Mary, Joe Flamm’s Italian-Croatian juggernaut. But Balkan food goes way beyond cevapi. The region includes Macedonia, Serbia, Bosnia, Slovenia, Greece, and other countries, and chefs with ties to these places are opening passion projects that look at these cuisines in fresh ways. These four, including