The old school dishes at this new Phoenix restaurant 'taste like love.' Here's what to order

"It tastes like love," my cousin declared as she dug her fork into a saucy bundle of stuffed cabbage and swirled it around a cloud of mashed potatoes. She's not one to make sentimental quips like that, so I knew the flavors had truly moved her.

Ground beef and rice stuffed cabbage rolls are pure grandma comfort food for Jews of Eastern European descent, but the one at Cafe Balkan was a little bit different from the cabbage we'd had at home and at Chompie's, our home-away-from-home, growing up.

Instead of chunky tomato sauce, commonly sweetened with ginger snaps, these cabbage rolls had a thinner, more silken sauce that flawlessly rounded out the dish. The cabbage leaves themselves had a slightly sour flavor because rather than being blanched in water, they had been pickled.

This is the hallmark of sarma, the signature dish of the Balkans, a southeastern European peninsula that encompasses nations like Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina,  Albania and Croatia.

"Who needs good karma when you've got a good sarma?" read a cheeky sign on the restaurant's wall next to a map of the area. I couldn't agree more.

On our visit, late summer storms raged across the north Phoenix parking lot, trapping everyone inside the brightly lit dining room. But with all this intriguing comfort food, nobody seemed to be too upset about it.

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Besides the sarma, we ordered a tremendous spread of cevapi sausages, roasted red peppers and gorgeous housemade flatbreads called lepinja, which were pita-shaped with a fluffy texture like Italian focaccia.

Delicate palacinke crepes stuffed with a Eurocrem spread of hazelnuts and chocolate were on their way.

And if we'd had to stay a little longer to ride out the storm, I could have spent even more time exploring the attached market filled with Eastern European goods like frozen spinach pastries and colorful bags of peanut puffs.

The pastry case alone was a veritable treasure trove of new-to-me wonders like crinkly almond bars, swirly raspberry cakes, flower-shaped cookie sandwiches and intricate bundles of dough labeled as nectarine roses. On another visit, I marveled over a cake called krempita, whose powdered puff pastry shell gave way to a big block of yellow custard.

These are all specialties in Serbia and Montenegro, where owners Radmila Minic and Stevan Panic are from. Minic is a classically trained chef who previously owned a Balkan restaurant in Wisconsin and Panic is an event promoter who brings musicians from Europe to perform in Arizona through his company, Panic Music Promotion. A flyer posted out front advertises his upcoming show with Serbian singer Lepa Brena, at CB Live Desert Ridge.

The two met while Minic was doing catering for Panic's shows and they decided to open their own Balkan restaurant in an area of north Phoenix known for its robust Balkan and Eastern European food community.

Everything is made from scratch, from the pastries and bread, down to the pickled cabbage in the sarma. The restaurant quickly became a community hub where students and businesspeople from the community gather, some of them three times a day, Panic said.

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Balkan cuisine beyond the meat plate

Balkan restaurants are typically known for their generous meat platters accompanied with red pepper dip ajvar, which has been described as the Macedonian hummus. Because of its geography, the food is influenced by the flavors of Eastern Europe and Turkey. Signature dishes like cevapi, a ground beef sausage, were developed during the centuries of rule by the Ottoman Empire.

I've tried various iterations of this dish but none as juicy as the cevapi at Cafe Balkan — the craggy charred exterior gave way to a soft center — where they were served with chopped raw onions, ajvar and a Balkan sour cream cheese called kajmak, which I spread over the fluffy flatbread to make a cevapi sandwich. The battered fries on the side were a welcome addition, assertively crispy and delicious.

We also enjoyed a plate of splayed-out red bell peppers called paprika, which had been roasted over an open fire and drizzled with olive oil and a splash of vinegar.

While they were fresh and vegetal, I mostly set them aside to dig into my personal favorite of the evening, a bean stew called pasulj. Sumptuously blended and creamy with cooked-down veggies like celery and onions, the dish was topped with half-moons of snappy veal sausage that provided an extra savory note.

Like the cabbage we started our meal with, the pasulj was both familiar and new — pure comfort food, with a little extra spice.

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Cafe Balkan

Where: 21043 N. Cave Creek Road, suite A6, Phoenix.

Hours: 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sunday, closed Monday.

Price: Soups $7.50 to $8.50; grill items $9.50 to $16.50; entrees $13.50 to $17.50. 

Details: 602-283-5360, cafebalkanaz.com.

Reach reporter Andi Berlin at amberlin@azcentral.com. Follow her on Facebook @andiberlin,  Instagram @andiberlin or Twitter @andiberlin.

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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Cafe Balkan in Phoenix: Your guide to the new restaurant's menu