March 29, 2006
The Tastes of Bosnia Follow Those Who Fled
By ALAN FLIPPEN
In the last few years Bosnian products have quietly begun taking their place on the shelves of New York's ethnic groceries.
Most Americans know of Bosnia and Herzegovina because of the war from 1992 to 1995, and the war was actually the catalyst for the imports.
Bosnians who fled to the United States began yearning for tastes of home, said Peter Menikou, owner of Euromarket in Astoria, Queens, which specializes in foods of southeastern Europe. New York's Bosnian-born population has tripled since the 2000 census, which found about 2,000, the Census Bureau estimates.
"The last seven years it's booming," Mr. Menikou said. "They gave a lot of visas to refugees."
Before its disintegration in the early 1990's Yugoslavia — from which Bosnia and Herzegovina split — exported a variety of packaged and processed foods to the United States. But until then it was never clear which Yugoslav republic those products were from, Mr. Menikou said.
Now, not only has the war made that clear, he said, but it has intensified regional differences in taste. "Everybody makes its own" now, he said. "Croatia makes its own. Bosnia makes its own. Serbia, Macedonia."
Yugoslav food has much in common with that of its neighbors to the east and the south, including Greece and especially Turkey. Among the best-known dishes are burek, a savory phyllo-based pastry, and cevapcici, sausagelike patties of spiced grilled lamb.
Within Yugoslavia, Bosnia was particularly famous for its meat, said Simun Simunovic, president of the Grand Prix Trading Corporation, an importer in Ridgewood, Queens.
"They are known as masters of grilling," said Mr. Simunovic, who grew up in Dubrovnik, a Croatian city near the Bosnian border. "Bosnia was known for cevapcici and another dish called pljeskavica — like hamburger but with garlic, sautéed onion and hot pepper mixed in."
Meat products cannot be imported because of federal restrictions, so specialties like suho meso, smoked beef that is reminiscent of bresaola, are made with traditional recipes in plants in the United States, he said.
The foods that Mr. Simunovic imports from Bosnia are more eclectic and obscure. They include ajvar, a relish made from red paprika peppers and eggplant that is served with grilled meat, and pekmez od sljiva, a thick, tart fruit spread made from the plums that also produce the region's famous slivovitz brandy. Feta-style cheese from Travnik in central Bosnia, creamier and less crumbly than the Greek version, is also available. Mr. Simunovic said he sells about $1 million a year worth of products from Bosnia, up from less than $200,000 10 years ago.
To homesick refugees, even the most mundane products can be comforting. Mr. Simunovic said Bosnia's Turkish-style coffee is his biggest seller. "They're big coffee drinkers, and they use this traditional way," with an unusually fine grind, he said.
Sugar cubes are also imported. Anisa Karkin Hromic, who emigrated from Bosnia in 1999, said, "The older people I know say they only like the Bosnian sugar cubes," which are flat, shaped like pats of butter with ragged edges. They taste the same, but the homemade look is important.
Exports of these products resumed quickly after the war because Bosnia's major food manufacturers were situated away from the battle zones, in cities like Travnik and Zenica, rather than the besieged capital, Sarajevo. The sole Adriatic Sea port through which Bosnian goods are shipped, Ploce, was not seriously damaged in the war and was available once the roads reopened, Mr. Simunovic said.
(By contrast foods from Kosovo, another war-torn region of the former Yugoslavia, are not yet widely available, because Kosovo is landlocked and the question of its independence has not been resolved.)
While the stores do provide a taste of Bosnia, Ms. Karkin Hromic wishes for more. "There are some products that I think you'd be a millionaire if you could sell them," she said.
The products that are available show up mainly in the outer boroughs where immigrants live, particularly Brooklyn and Queens. Mr. Simunovic said his company did business with 215 stores in New York City, virtually all outside Manhattan.
It isn't clear whether this is because Bosnian food is too exotic for Americans, or because people just haven't been exposed to it yet. Mr. Simunovic thinks the latter: "If Bosnians came at the same time as Italians, we'd be eating burek and pizza. But they came too late."
Cisto iz znatizelje, koji su to nasi proizvodi koji bi isli ko halva?
Je l' se i to podrazumjeva pod "nase"? 
