UTICA — Balkan Street Food is coming to the New York State Fair to share a bit of culture and delicious food with the masses.

Tarik Pehlic owns Two Brothers Cafe and Pizzeria and the food truck Balkan Street Food. “The truck is brand new, but we’ve had our shop here in Utica for 20 years now,” Pehlic said. “We named it ‘Balkan Street Food’ after the Balkan region, which is Bosnia, Serbia, Croatia, and Albania. And the foods that we’ll be selling are the top go-to foods from that region.”

Pehlic said his family are immigrants from Bosnia who came to the United States after the Bosnian War of 1988. “My father is a baker by trade, and right after we immigrated, we opened up a business in 2002,” he said. “We started with a bakery and then transitioned to a cafe and pizzeria.”

When asked why they were going to the fair, Pehlic said the goal was to take some of the food sold at Two Brothers, bring it to a broader audience, and introduce it to people who might be seeing it for the first time.

While Two Brothers has a lot of common food like subs, wraps, chicken, and pizza, it’s the foods from that Balkan area that will be on the menu at the fair.

One of these items is the homemade phyllo dough pies — burek and sirnica.

“It’s made with handcrafted phyllo dough. We don’t buy it at a store,” Pehlic said. “It comes with a choice of either meat or cottage cheese filling.”

It takes time and skill to make phyllo dough by hand, something Pehlic says takes a real craftsman to make. Typically made with flour, water, and a small amount of oil, phyllo dough requires progressive rolling and stretching into a large sheet. 

“You have to stretch the dough until it’s almost paper thin,” he said. “Once you fill it with meat or cheese and roll it up, it gives it a fluffy and flaky texture that sets it apart from any other savory pie.”

Other items include cevapi, a national meal in the Balkans consisting of minced veal and beef served in sausage form. The cevapi are then stuffed inside a homemade bread called lepinja. Sides include onion, sour cream, roasted red pepper, and a traditional eggplant sauce called “ajvar.”

Gyros, also known as “doner kebabs,” are on the menu and made of seasoned lamb and beef cuts. Fresh cuts of meat are shaved off a vertical broiler and then served on pita bread. This wrap is then topped with lettuce, tomato, onion, red cabbage, and homemade tzatziki sauce.

Pehlic said the cafe has become a go-to place over the years for people looking for some authentic dishes and thanked the Utica community for its hospitality.

“Utica has been open and treated us great. We’ve been blessed, and it’s a great place to do business,” he said. “There’s a large Bosnian community here in Utica, and while they’re eating our food, we also have Utica locals who aren’t used to it coming back and eating as well. Overall, we’re happy. Utica’s a great place.”

Pehlic said that sharing food is a chance to share culture as well, and the New York State Fair is a chance to do that on a bigger scale.

“There’s going to be a lot of people [at the fair] and hopefully, having more people try our food or are just curious, then decide to make a trip out to Utica and visit,” Pehlic said. “And if everything goes well, we hope to be a part of the fair for years to come.”