Balkan restaurant finally opens after zoning setback
It's been a long journey, but a former Bosnian refugee has finally opened his restaurant in St. John's — the first of its kind in the province.
Eldin Husic and his wife Adnela own and operate the Balkan Kitchen on Cookstown Road, which offers traditional dishes from the 13 countries on the Balkan Peninsula in southeastern Europe.
"People are slowly coming in and we've been sold out pretty much every day," he told the St. John's Morning Show.
The opening of the Cookstown Road restaurant was more than six months in the making, after the original plan to put it in the space of a former infamous bar on Boncloddy Street ran into zoning issues with the city.
The couple had purchased the former Sports Bar on Boncloddy Street, known as a clubhouse for the Viking Motorcycle Club, but later found out the city had rezoned it as a residential property.
While that was a setback at the time, Husic said it actually all worked out as they love the new location and people in the neighbourhood seem to be coming out in droves to support them.
Smooth sailing
Husic said the people of St. John's have been extremely helpful every step of the way, helping his family land on their feet by doing what they could to find the Cookstown Road location and get them settled in.
"It was smooth sailing. Despite all the negative comments you find in the media about the city, the city was at its finest," Husic said.
"Every office I turned to helped me, from parking to the department of planning to news outlets to neighbours to random strangers. My wife and I had such a great time with everyone."
Husic said up to now they've been doing a soft opening, just letting people find out about them through word of mouth instead of announcing a grand opening — and getting swamped and overwhelmed.
The Balkan Kitchen isn't meant to handle a lot of people at once, Husic said, with them only preparing 40 meals a day and aiming for a small, intimate setting.
Cultural hub
While the focus is on food, he said they want to be a place where people come and learn about the history of Balkan food, and not just go home with full bellies but also new cultural experiences and knowledge.
"I don't think eating is just a physical experience. It should be a mental and emotional experience as well."
To that end, they've already organized special cultural nights that focus on different aspects of Balkan culture and their associated dishes. In two weeks, for example, they will treat guests to Bosnian spiritual music and an hour and a half of eating, learning and entertainment.
"When you get to eat this food and get a bit of a story with it, when you get some music that comes with it and people who kind of explain the whole background story, you realize that when eating this food you eat a bit of history," Husic said.
"We want to be part of the whole community, not just on the food level or one level. We are not just an ethnic restaurant and I'm not just a former refugee from the former Yugoslavia or Bosnia and Herzegovina. We are citizens of St. John's."
