Balkans / 19

Quick index

• Cevapi — Finger-length, skinless minced-beef sausages descended from Ottoman kebab, grilled over charcoal and stuffed by the five or ten into pillowy somun bread with raw onion and kajmak.
• Raznjici — The Balkan answer to shish kebab: small cubes of pork or veal threaded on thin skewers, seasoned simply with salt and onion juice, and grilled fast so the edges char while the center stays juicy.
• Pljeskavica — A hand-flattened disc of the same spiced minced meat used for cevapi, grilled and served in lepinja flatbread — essentially the kebab family's burger.
• Mici — Romania's caseless grilled rolls of beef, lamb, and pork whipped with garlic, thyme, and bicarbonate of soda, which makes them puff and stay springy on the grill.
• Kebapche — Bulgaria's oblong minced pork-and-beef grill sausage, seasoned heavily with cumin and black pepper and always ordered in multiples alongside its round sibling, the kyufte.
• Qebapa — The Albanian and Kosovar branch of the cevapi family: small skinless minced-lamb-and-beef sausages grilled over coals and served with thick yogurt, raw onion, and flaky bread.
• Gyros — Greece's vertical rotisserie of stacked pork (or chicken) shaved into a warm pita with tzatziki, tomato, onion — and, controversially to purists, a handful of fries inside the wrap.
• Souvlaki — Small cubes of pork or chicken marinated in olive oil, lemon, and oregano, grilled on wooden sticks — called kalamaki in Athens, souvlaki elsewhere.
• Kontosouvli — Souvlaki's oversized cousin: fist-sized chunks of marinated pork threaded onto a long spit and turned slowly over coals for hours, then carved off in ragged, smoky pieces.
• Souvla — Cyprus's weekend ritual: very large pieces of lamb, pork, or chicken slow-turned on a motorized spit over a charcoal barbecue called a foukou, seasoned with little more than salt, oregano, and time.
• Sheftalia — Cypriot crepinettes: minced pork and lamb with onion and parsley wrapped in lacy caul fat, skewered, and grilled until the membrane crisps and bastes the meat from outside in.
• Soutzoukakia — Oblong cumin-and-garlic beef kofta brought to Greece by refugees from Smyrna in 1922, briefly fried then simmered in a red-wine tomato sauce.
• Bifteki — The Greek grill-house patty: minced beef kneaded with grated onion, oregano, and mint, shaped flat and charcoal-grilled, often stuffed with feta or kasseri.
• Frigărui — Romania's grill-party skewers of marinated pork, chicken, or mutton cubes alternated with onion, pepper, bacon, and sometimes sausage, named from frigare ('spit').
• Leskovac mixed grill — The charcoal-grill canon of Leskovac, Serbia's barbecue capital shaped by five centuries of Ottoman kebab technique: mesano meso platters combining cevapi-style minced rolls, pljeskavica, and vesalica (thin smoked pork loin strips).
• Kebapi — North Macedonia's finger-shaped grilled rolls of seasoned minced beef (often with lamb), served ten to a portion with raw onion, kajmak, and somun flatbread in dedicated kebapcilnica grills.
• Shishcheta — Bulgaria's everyday skewers, a diminutive of the Turkish sis: cubes of marinated pork or chicken grilled on wooden sticks with peppers, onion, and mushrooms at every skara grill house.
• Kokoretsi — Lamb offal (heart, liver, sweetbreads, lungs) threaded on a horizontal spit, wrapped tightly in seasoned intestines, and slowly spit-roasted, then sliced off in rounds; it is the centerpiece of Greek Easter alongside the whole lamb.
• Kalamaki — The small pork skewer of Athens, where 'kalamaki' (little reed) denotes the stick itself while northern Greeks call the same thing souvlaki; it is eaten off the stick with bread and lemon, distinct from pita gyros, whose stacked rotating spit is a 20th-century import of the doner technique.