‘Folks dance on tables’: welcome to Belgrade’s kafana pub tradition | Serbia holidays
I’m in an excellent old style pub, consuming beer over wood tables and tucking right into a hearty meal. Besides the wood tabletops are coated in pink checked cloths, the decor is Balkan folks.
As an alternative of a roast I’m diving right into a pile of minced beef sausages referred to as ćevapi and imbibing pictures of rakia, the native plum brandy. An accordion participant attracts musical breaths in a nook, his companion strikes Gypsy tunes from a fiddle, individuals dance on tables. Welcome to the kafana.
Kafanas are Serbia’s tavernas: a restaurant, pub and music venue working from morning to late night time. Regulars come for a energetic breakfast earlier than work, households throw weddings and celebrations right here, enterprise offers are minimize and sorrow drowned in darkish corners. They have been so central to individuals’s day by day lives that associates and the postman would come to seek out you at your native kafana, not your house.
Sadly, many conventional kafanas closed down within the 2000s, partly due to their reluctance to prioritise profit-making over letting regulars sit at one desk all day. Nevertheless, very like struggling British pubs turning to gastronomy, kafanas have tailored their choices to outlive, heralding a culinary comeback. I’m following a revamped kafana tour by the center of Belgrade with seasoned bekrija – kafana common – Goran Magdić from native tour operator Taste Serbia.
We start the day with breakfast on the metropolis’s oldest kafana Znak Pitanja which means “the query mark”, which began life within the sixteenth century as an Ottoman espresso home. A comfy, wood-panelled restaurant in a low constructing with overhanging lintels, it sits reverse certainly one of Belgrade’s oldest church buildings. The patrons acquired in hassle for calling it “the bar by the church,” so caught up a “?” and by no means bothered to rename. Seated at low sofra tables, we’re served Turkish espresso roasted on a brazier adopted by a fiery shot of rakia – supposedly the important thing to Balkan longevity. After this come omelettes and pies laden with cheese, tender folds of bread, fried dough uštipci and smoked meats.
This kafana’s Ottoman fashion is simply one of many many influences present in Belgrade’s various streetscape, the place east and west converge. Ornate artwork nouveau and neoclassical facades are offset by megalith communist-era blocks. The kafanas, too, have developed into three distinctive types.
Some are eastern-leaning, with hearty Balkan delicacies and raucous Gypsy trumpet bands. Others are Austro-Hungarian fashion, serving dishes like goulash, with stringed devices and accordions setting the temper. Extra not too long ago, nightclub-style kafanas have popped up, which amp up conventional music into turbofolk, and pull a youthful crowd bent on revelry.
Turbofolk later: for now I’m exploring Skadarlija, a cobbled road that was as soon as town’s bohemian quarter. Right here, kafanas have been house to poets, artists and singers, who drew inspiration from the energetic forged of characters they encountered and traded their skills for sustenance. One of many extra legendary was the Dva Jelena restaurant’s singer Toma Zdravković. Grainy movies from the Eighties present him roaming from desk to desk wreathed in smoke and warbling to adoring patrons. Now he’s forged in bronze as a statue on Skadarlija, and folks lay flowers and cigarettes at his ft.
For a hearty lunch, we head to close by Srpska Kafana, a watering gap for the actors of the Atelje 212 theatre subsequent door. Goran tells me that within the Yugoslav period, Srpska would get so busy that one famend thespian Zoran Radmilović, a type of Serbian Terry Jones, used to sit down by the bathroom cubicle if he discovered the place full – and entertain all current together with his impressions of the “WC mafia” – the penny-pinching Balkan lavatory attendants.
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Grateful to have a desk and never Radmilović’s rest room, we tuck into juicy ćevapi and grilled meats slathered in melting kajmak (a sour-cream-like unfold) served by aged waiters in timeless white shirts and black waistcoats. Serbia’s delicacies is meat-centric, however vegetarian choices similar to baked sauerkraut, grilled paprikas, and scrumptious soups can be found. Dessert is a mixture of Bosnian, Turkic and central European: truffles filled with walnuts and dripping in syrup, baked apples.
After this, I’m in want of a post-prandial stroll across the fountained Tašmajdan park. On the way in which there I pause exterior the red-and-white checkered phone change constructing, and realise it seems to be precisely like a kafana tablecloth.
As night time descends, the kafana transforms as soon as once more. Lamps shine from the home windows, and the music begins in earnest. At SFRJ, a Yugoslav paraphernalia-filled restaurant overlooking the Danube river, we seize beers and gaze over town’s twinkling lights.
It’s unsettling being surrounded by the Tito bric-a-brac given Yugoslavia’s violent ending, and the brutal position Slobodan Milošević’s Serbian paramilitaries performed. Serbia has by no means absolutely reckoned with this darkish previous, and the identical sentiment that celebrates struggle criminals is at the moment reworked into pro-Russian leanings in over half the inhabitants. However right here a bandstand wobbles within the nook, the musicians enjoying Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian folks songs on request, in addition to Yugoslav hits from the 70s. The music provokes large emotion amongst older locals: fingers sway within the air and eyes start to glisten after a couple of robust drinks.
The band wraps up round midnight, however I’m eager to maintain the celebration going, so head to one of many newer kafana-inspired “turbofolk taverns” BAM membership. Traditionalists are snobby about these spots, however to me they present how the kafana continues to evolve and seize the essence of Belgrade’s nightlife, which fuses hedonism and nostalgia. I descend to a packed basement the place native legend Paganini is enjoying: a Roma musician with an electrical violin. Folks bathe the band with money, an act of displaying off, however completed within the spirit of enjoyable. The high-energy turbofolk beats have me dancing till the wee small hours. The one attainable remedy the subsequent day is breakfast rakia.
Taste Serbia provides a brand new kafana tour, ranging from €60