Bernie’s Balkan Kitchen serves up hearty fare to satisfy a big appetite on a chilly day
Mia Stainsby
Sun
Erika Marinovic, owner/chef at Bernie’s Balkan Kitchen, chats with customers. Photograph by : Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun
If you’re anything like me, the colder weather sets off a sometimes insatiable hunger. I think it’s the survival instinct kicking in, my body preparing for an ice age. What it needs is a place like Bernie’s Balkan Kitchen to get over this hunger hump.
As the name suggests, the food is Eastern European with sturdy dishes like cabbage rolls, beef stroganoff, sausages, goulash soup, piroshki and burek, a phyllo stack with cheese or meat fillings.
The hard-working Erika Marinovic’s cooking is right up the alley for bottomless appetites. Witness the truckers from across the nation who have heard of her and frequent the place for a good, honest feed.
It’s not just fuel food, though. Marinovic goes the distance to do it right. She makes her own phyllo pastry, saying she won’t use the “frozen stuff from Toronto that everyone else seems to use.” Hers, she says, is thinner and superior.
Bernie’s Balkan Kitchen has become something of a crossroads, attracting various ethnic communities. The Chinese — as well as Spanish, Mexicans and Slavic customers — love her tripe soup. The African Canadian community are taken with her bread, which she bakes daily. “They don’t even speak English but somehow they found out about it.”
At one time in the 1980s, Marinovic used to run a restaurant in Surrey called Mermaid Seafood. She’s working harder than ever now as customers are asking for their own favourites. Borscht is one of them and it will soon be on the menu.
“I don’t try to be over-complicated,” she says. “This is good old-fashioned comfort food like grandma used to make and she didn’t have 100 items on hand to make it.”
As for why it’s called Bernie’s Balkan Kitchen, you might ask why it’s the former owner’s name on the sign rather than her own. I think it should be good old-fashioned “Erika’s Kitchen,” plain and simple, not over-complicated.
– BERNIE’S BALKAN KITCHEN
7340 Kingsway, Burnaby. 604-526-6580. Open 7 days a week for lunch and to 8 p.m. for dinner.
© The Vancouver Sun 2007
