Kafana
Dined 7/15/23
Served Fast Facts:
🚨 We created a map to help you better navigate New York Restaurant Week! Not perfect, but should get the job done for all you loyal readers (and your homies) 🚨
People who are allergic to cashews are also allergic to pink peppercorn
When eating Serbian food, put ajvar on everything
Keltis wine is the best Slovenian stuff around these days
Keep reading to learn more about our recent trip to Kafana
Shoutout to this edition’s guests: Dougie, Bjarni, and Jake. We hope you enjoyed our little taste of Serbia, comment below if you want to join next time :)
Hello sunshine 🙂
You find me this morning in Maine, affectionately referred to on license plates as Vacationland. Where the streets are paved with lobster shells, and blueberries fall from the sky like manna. I’m on Sutton Island. It’s a small island just south of Acadia National Park. You can only get here by boat, and I love how secluded it feels. Really a top-tier place to write a newsletter about Serbian food in the East Village.
I came here once before in 2012. That was the year the Mayans said the world was going to end, and I believed them. Let’s just say December 21st wasn’t a great day for me. I mean they made a movie with John Cusack for crying out loud. What was I supposed to do? Put my feet up and relax?
Forgive me, I digress. Something about this Maine air has me energized. You’re here to read about our trip to Kafana, and I’m here to tell you all about it. Our waiter Srdjan was seriously the man. He took us on a tour of Serbia’s finest dishes - and had some killer restaurant recommendations of his own. Read on to learn about those … and more! Who knows what mysteries lie in the sentences to come.
Picture this. You’re me. A five foot ten Ashkenazi stallion. Warby Parker frames. People’s heads turn as you swagger by. I know it’s a pretty intoxicating feeling, but please try to focus. We’re in a hurry. We’re power walking to get to Kafana because it’s raining, we forgot to get cash, and we thought the place was closer to our hotel. Our table is for five, and we have some first timers joining us. Making a good first impression is important, so being late is not an option.
Getting cash was the easy part. It’s the only form of payment Kafana accepts, but New York is an ATM’s paradise. I popped into a bodega, withdrew some green, and continued on my way. One helpful rule of thumb - we ended up spending ~$100 per person (including wine), so keep in mind as you prepare for your visit.
The hard part was arriving on time. Looking at the Google Maps walking time of 16 minutes, and our reservation time in 8 minutes, I decided to throw caution to the wind and run. It was a blur of khaki pants and white Oliver Cabell shoes, but I made it more or less on time. The restaurant has a pretty small interior. There’s lots of exposed brick, wooden furniture, and what appears to be family photos on the wall. We got a big, round table directly under the AC vent in the corner. I’d like to thank God for what felt like her cool breath piercing through the otherwise hot, humid conditions that befell Manhattan that night.
Kafana was recommended to us by Ivan - our rockstar server from Shukette. I’ll be the first to admit that the Serbian restaurant would not have been the first that we selected from his list of 22 recommendations. But Ivan gave us clear instructions over email. And we are so glad that he did. The most beautiful thing about the Served Supper Club is the connections that we make with people - and learning about what they love to eat. Because of Ivan, we were able to dive confidently into a new culture. For that we can’t thank him enough.
Picking up where Ivan left off, was Srdjan - who found it delightfully hilarious to read Ivan’s instructions. Of course we went through our usual song and dance. “What are your favorite things on the menu? What’s the story of the restaurant?” Srdjan cut right to the jugular. He said you guys should get the tasting menu. It includes everything in Ivan’s email, but we were able to shoehorn in the pecena paprika. They’re slightly spicy, slightly garlicky, and slightly sweet roasted peppers that I’m glad we got the chance to try. If I were you, I’d shoehorn them in too.
The word “tasting menu” has developed such a negative connotation among hungry boys everywhere. I think I blame the French. So often you go out to the tasting menu restaurant, spend the equivalent of like four non-tasting menu dinners, and leave feeling hungry, poor, and unsatisfied. As someone who needs no encouragement to spend time in the world of ring molds and tweezers, I recognize that there is a time and a place for a good tasting menu. But, as an occasionally hungry boy, I also recognize that sometimes the masculine urge to feast is strong. To fill a table with meat and alcohol and then leave feeling extremely full. Kafana gets you there. It’s a five star Uber there. I’ll show you.
Before this dinner, I knew nothing about Serbian food, but I will do my best to educate you on what I know now. High-level, Serbian food revolves around grilled meat, fresh seasonal vegetables, and dairy. The first thing to hit the table was hot pita, with extremely creamy, melty kajmak sandwiched inside. Kajmak is kind of like a mixture of feta cheese and butter. It melted, squeezed out the sides, and added richness to everything we piled on top of the pita. Pro tip - don’t be overly hungry and impatient like us. That bread, meat, and cheese got demolished in two seconds flat. We should have been more judicious with it for two reasons. The first is that a lot of other stuff that hit the table would have gone extremely well with bread. The second is that we got really full really early. Learn from our mistakes, readers.
There’s a red spread that comes in little cups. It’s is called ajvar. Per Ivan’s email, we made sure to ask for extra. It’s a great all-purpose condiment that goes well on pretty much everything. Not unlike ketchup for American food. The closest comparison I can give you to understand the experience of eating ajvar is a very red pepper forward baba ganoush. A lot of people neglect the fact that baba ganoush uses eggplant to create an emulsion of olive oil. That’s where the creaminess comes from, and ajvar has an extremely similar mouthfeel. There’s more going on here than simply pulverized peppers, eggplant, and garlic. Experiment with it. Put that sh*t on everything.
After the starters, the fellas were feeling good, but we weren’t prepared for the next round in the ring with Kafana. Nobody realized that the appetizers would be followed by an absolute deluge of meats, carbs, and vegetables. It was truly a beautiful thing. To be overwhelmed and uncertain during a meal is a gift. So often we’re comfortable, being fed overly processed, completely sterilized, mass-produced slop. Our fast casual lunches, meal prepped dinners - these things are routine. The main courses at Kafana were anything but. For me, it was an adventure. Full of questions like “Can we physically finish all of this? Was that the liver or the dates? Who added French fries to the tasting menu? I would like to kiss them on the mouth.”
Hopefully the photos above start to give you a sense for the sheer magnitude of this meal. We had an extremely fresh cucumber, tomato, and cheese salad. There was much debate about whether it was feta or something slightly funkier. Our guest Bjarni sided with me - that it might be similar to feta, but it had a sheepy, pecorino aftertaste. One point for Will. The pile of grilled meats was chicken, spicy sausage, bacon wrapped liver, bacon wrapped dates, cevapi, ham, the list goes on. Cevapi is a popular Balkan dish of small, grilled, finger-shaped sticks of ground meat. They’re awesome, go really well with ajvar, and my brother won’t stop calling himself the “Cevapi Papi.”
One more callout before we get to Srdjan’s favorite restaurants. The dessert and the wine. Loyal readers of this newsletter know that I’m not a huge wine guy, but after reading Ivan’s email we obviously had to order the Keltis wine. I mean it’s “the best Slovenian stuff around these days.” Having never tried any other Slovenian stuff, wine or otherwise, I think I have to agree. Our bottle was a sparkling white. It was cold, refreshing, slightly sour, and didn’t hang around in my mouth for too long. I’d definitely recommend it. Lastly, I don’t have a good photo of the dessert platter that came out, but it was a wave the white flag moment for a bunch of us at the table. Imagine a pile of hot nutella-stuffed crepes, cold chestnut cream (called kesten pire), and a baklava-like pastry stuffed with cherries. All extremely good. We were so so full, but we were very very happy.
SRDJAN’S FAVORITE RESTAURANTS
Huge shoutout to Srdjan for such a fun service. He did a great job of explaining what we were eating and seemed to be genuinely excited by the “waiter favorites” concept. When we asked him what he knows about the food industry that the average person wouldn't, he told us that people who are allergic to cashews are also allergic to pink peppercorns. The more you know.
You can find his favorite restaurants below. Our next waiter favorites newsletter will feature Estela. Can’t wait.
Nobody Told Me (go for the burger)
Enjoy your week. Love you all.
Served,
The Supper Club
It’s the 5’10” Ashkenazi line for me
When he puts opinions in the fast facts section :0