Balkan Taste — Restaurant in Elk Grove Township

Well I discovered this restaurant on my way home from work this past Thursday as I was eating at my Bulgarian restaurant that I'm familiar with called Sophia grill. Well I made it as a bucket list to try and I am glad I did this because I was looking for something different and Eastern European cuisine is always interesting coming from eating to much of the popular ethnic food that I was getting tired of. One thing I noticed with these Eastern European restaurants as they don't give water when dining in. Anyways wanted something different than my usual popular mainstream ethic food and this was it. Well in comparison to Bulgarian they had much more variety. I started with the Balkan Serbian beef soup in which they also give bread and it was uniquely delicious well to me. It wasn't tomato base it was much more savory and gravy with the herbs in which you eat it with bread. The next dish was the Serbian Balkan sausage just called "Cevapeici with Kaymak" and it was also tasty too if not uniquely delicious. They put onions underneath as garnish and light spices. Ordered some mixed vegetables which was a good choice. It was zucchini and the sweet peppers and paprika that was grilled very delicious and savory. I also ordered another smoothie like drink both in strawberry first and in blueberry as a beverage to say don't give water. I like the blueberry more but the strawberry was good too since there's not too many blueberry beverages. I ended it up with the Balkan cake which was also delicious too in regards to the flavor it was like a cheesecake texture with strawberries and graham cracker bread as the base. After my low calorie diet for a month and a week in March I definitely will come back here and try some of the other specials they also have Balkan hamburgers Serbian style but I shall see next to Beef Stew with Mash Potatoes. Four out of five stars because they don't serve water. If they do it's bottle water and I did not want to pay. Somewhat expensive dinner at $50 I ordered worth of food alone but overall it...

Balkan Taste What a fun night my sister-in-law and I had sampling Serbian food. I have a digital pal who has traveled extensively in the Balkan region. I always ask what kind of food she is encountering. She replied one of her favorite was Serbian food. I googled Serbian food and found this four+stars restaurant, Balkan Taste in Mount Prospect. My pal reviewed the menu and made some suggestions. I printed off her suggestions and gave it to the waitress telling her that We were going to split everything. So she brought an extra plate. We started with Gibanica, a cheese pie with what appeared to be phyllo dough! Flaky and delicious

Next came the sopska salad tomatoes onions cucumbers, and feta cheese. Very thinly sliced cucumbers with an excellent feta cheese.

Then Cevapcici, which are small ground beef sausage links on a bed of chopped onions with kaymak. This was what I had been looking forward to tasting and they didn’t disappoint. We had only ordered a small portion as we were trying so much food but I was wishing we had ordered more. I forgot to take photos before we split this portion.

Just when I thought the food couldn’t get any better the Gourmet Pljeskavica arrived which is a 12 ounce burger on a slice of bread stuffed with bacon, smoked Gouda and onions with kaymak. This was fabulous! Kaymak is similar to clotted cream.

And for dessert we had cherry baklava which was very tasty and more tart than sweet. The perfect ending to a super feast.

We had so much fun trying the different foods, asking the very helpful, friendly waitress questions about the food, listening to Serbian music playing in the background and meeting a Bosnian couple at the next table who were fun to talk with and compare our food choices. And the best part is we each have enough leftovers to have dinner tomorrow night! The Balkan Taste is in the strip mall on the northwest corner of Oakton and Elmhurst Road. Enter...

We stopped in for lunch on Monday of this week to check the place out. We let the server know (she was delightful by the way) that it was our first visit and asked for recommendations. Goulash was the special so we both tried it and it was amazing! In this case it was served on a bed of mashed potatoes, a different take from what I am used to but this was my first experience with Balkan food. Our server asked if we wanted salad with the dish which felt like too much food so we declined. Moments after our entrees came out, someone (likely the owner) came out from the kitchen with a complimentary tomato, onion and cucumber salad saying that it was a fantastic accompaniment to the dish. He was right. Price was very reasonable, excellent selection and service...