The way to a man's heart is through his stomach

Balkans food, strongly influenced by Mediterranean cooking, you can taste in all ex-Yugoslavian countries. In general speaking, you can find the same dishes, sometimes a bit changed in different regions.

Bosnian cooking is closely related to Turkish, Greek, Middle Eastern and Central Europe cuisines. It’s called slow food, because you can’t be in hurry to prepare the dish, which is light, healthy, mostly cooked in lots of water, without any creamy souses. In Sarajevo, it’s quite hard to find a pork (of course, except East-Sarajevo, where Serbian people are living). Mostly, you eat beef and lamb here.

Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. It needs to make you strong for all day long, so mostly you eat bread, eggs, butter, honey, jam. It’s also good to know that you can eat pita or chicken with potatoes in the country side. 

Of course, you can’t forget about strong Bosnian coffee.

Meze is a selection of the small cold dishes, typically home-made bread, kajmak (delicious white cheese), green salad and smoked beef,  served before the diner. Don’t be amazed if you receive rakija as a drink. It’s completely normal and that’s the way of hospitality.

Diner time is a moment of entering to the paradise. The choice is big, between delicious sarma (meat and rice rolled in pickled cabbage leaves), ćevapi (Bosnian kebab, small grilled meat sausages, served with onion), grilled calamari or pljeskavica (a beef steak served with onion, paprika and green salad). You can’t leave Balkans without knowing a taste of dolme (little onions or paprikas stuffed with minced meat) and čobanski lonac (18 different vegetables mixed with 4 different types of meat, picture below, my number one). 

Traditional Bosnian deserts are also something to try. 

The real taste of Bosnia you can also find in the different kinds of bread (lepina, kukuruzara, bosanski pogač) and herbal teas. Local people believe in the powerful benefits of herbal infusions. Bosnian drink them as a medicine. Be careful when you order water,  sometimes you can receive running water.