Let's get Serb'd

Serb'in it up in Portage Park

Hi everyone!

Slow news weekend, huh? I’m sure many of you are distracted right now (I certainly am), so sitting here writing about food feels like small potatoes. But for the moment it’s business as usual—I’ll be sitting here worried about the same things as all of you.

This week’s edition of The Party Cut is on the free schedule, which I’m particularly happy about, because today’s place is a really interesting one.

That being said, every other edition’s behind a paywall (you know, the usual spiel), because without your support, I genuinely could not afford to run this thing. Your subscriptions cover expenses, the time and effort’s on me. Upgrade using the little thingie below:

The one thing I keep forgetting to mention is that when you sign up you get access to the entire archives—there’s 71 editions total, and half of them are behind the wall. Only a few of the places I’ve covered previously have gone out of business, so the intel’s still good.

There’s a few reasons why we ended up where we did for this edition of the newsletter. One, my car’s in the shop, and between my car and Davida’s, mine’s got the functioning air conditioner. We couldn’t justify driving too far out of our neighborhood because that thing practically turns into an Easy-Bake Oven.

Two, this place comes highly recommended to us by our friend Luna, who owns Moonwalker Cafe, which is our favorite coffee shop in Chicago (but we’re heavily biased, it’s by us). Please visit her and say Dennis and Davida sent you. Coupled with the fact that we couldn’t drive too far before one of us would probably pass out in the car, heading here made perfect sense.

That’s how we ended up at Sandy’s Bakery and Deli in Portage Park.

Sandy’s serves a type of food that’s not common in Chicago, and that’s Serbian food.

The place itself is literally a bakery and deli, and is fairly small. Most of it is occupied by a deli counter and a small refrigerator section, but you can dine in at one of the three or four tables that are inside the place. There’s handy paper menus up front to look over.

Just place your order with the cashier, and they’ll bring the food out to you. You pay after the meal, but I’d recommend you bring some cash for a tip, because there’s no tipping option on their digital point of sale. And don’t worry if you have no idea what you’re doing. I was completely helpless when I was ordering, and the employee could tell, so she made things really easy for us.

Sandy’s is one of those places you want to get to sooner than later, because by the time we got there during the midafternoon, they were cleaned out of a bunch of stuff.

Their burek selection (stuffed flaky pastry, all $19.99) is typically pretty varied, because there’s cheese, apple, cherries, ground meat, mushrooms, and spinach. Everything was sold out except for the cheese and the meat versions, and considering Sandy’s menu is extremely meat-centric, I made a last second call to go for the cheese.

I’m not sure I could have made a better decision, though now I want to go back and try the rest of the burek. The cheese in the wedge-cut phyllo pastry is the perfect level of salty, enough that you want to chase more of it in each subsequent buttery bite.

$20 is certainly not cheap, but the burek is also huge. We’ll happily be eating the leftover slices for a few days.

Sandy’s roasts whole pig and lamb on the weekend (Friday through Sunday), and that means if you show up on one of those days, you can get a plate of one of those meats, plus order it by the pound to go.

These are clearly hot sellers, because when I looked in the display case, the lamb was entirely gone, and there were only a few pieces of pork remaining. Though it’s not marked on the menu, you can order a pork or lamb plate ($22.99 for pork), which comes with a generous pile of roast meat, cabbage salad, and bread.

Skin-on roast pork is one of my favorite things in the world, and Sandy’s does it just right, with a crisp well-salted exterior. Even though we got a lean portion, it was still tender and pulled apart easily. I should have bought more to take home.

I didn’t pay any attention to the cabbage salad until I’d eaten more than a few bites of pork, when I realized that it wasn’t just there for show. It’s dressed in a vinegar-based dressing and serves as the acidic foil to all of that meat.

And the lepinja bread you receive with your meal is no slouch, either.

Lepinja is a Balkan flatbread, but calling it “flat” isn’t quite right, because it’s got some height to it. It’s a spongy and chewy round that’s cut into quarters, and it’s fun to tear large hunks of it off to eat.

One of the items on the menu is the pljeskavica ($17.99), which Sandy’s explains is their version of a beef burger.

At this point, I think the staff didn’t believe we wanted to continue eating that much food at the shop, because the rest of the food came out in to-go containers, which I found funny.

The pljeskavica is a massive sight to behold, and it barely fits in the takeout container. It comes on a whole round of lepinja and is served with potatoes that are crammed in on top.

The word “burger” is sort of a misnomer here, because the patty has a bouncy chew to it like a breakfast sausage (or a cevapi, which I’ll get to shortly). It comes dressed with diced raw onion and kajmak, which is a tangy clotted cream-like cheese (kinda like whipped cream cheese) that has a feta-like salty tang to it. We loved this thing; it’s juicy, chewy, and seasoned throughout. Plus it’s so big we could have simply ordered this and nothing else, and come away stuffed.

While Sandy’s offers five other types of single grilled meats not including the pljeskavica, the order you should go for is the Sandy’s Mix Single ($18.99).

That’s because it has a little bit of almost the entire menu in it. That includes cevapi (skinless beef sausage), rostiljska kobasica (spicy pork sausages), dimljena vesalica (grilled pork loin), and piletina na zaru (grilled chicken).

Talk about a crash course in eating new dishes that neither of us could pronounce. Thankfully, since this one’s a sampler platter and just called “Sandy’s Mix Single,” you don’t have worry about butchering the names when you order it.

If you’ve ever been to a street festival here in Chicago, you’ve probably passed by the Ćevapčići stand selling those sausage and pita sandwiches (it’s got a big blue sign with yellow lettering on it).

Ćevapčići is also known as cevapi, and it’s a Balkan sausage that’s got a very unique chewy and springy texture to it, thanks to the addition of baking soda. Sandy’s tastes just like the versions I’ve previously had elsewhere, and since cevapi has such a signature texture and flavor, I always find it a joy.

The rostiljska kobasica (spicy pork sausage) is new to me, but it’s not unfamiliar, because it’s a thin skin-on sausage with a medium-coarse grind to it.

It feels like a cousin to kielbasa, and is similarly smoked—judging by the general cloud of smoke hanging around the deli, they do this in-house.

If the fattier stuff isn’t quite your thing, the grilled pork loin might be more your speed, since the thin medallions are leaner and a little bit lighter.

That’s not a subtle knock. This style of cuisine (in this case, Balkan) really is hearty, and having an option that’s not a full fat sausage or roasted pork is a welcome thing.

And last but not least, the the piletina na zaru, the grilled chicken, is juicy thanks to the fact that it’s made of boneless and skinless chicken thigh.

Raw onions and kajmak for the grilled meat plate

What we ate at Sandy’s doesn’t cover the things you can pick up to take home, which includes a variety of salads, soup, baked beans, stuffed peppers and cabbage, stew, fish, pork cracklings, not to mention all the pastries and bread in the display case.

There’s a lot to pick from, and Davida and I went home with a few bites including some cute peach-shaped cookies that had a rum-flavored filling in them. We bought some other stuff too, like some mass-manufactured kajmak, the cream cheese I mentioned earlier. (Sandy’s homemade stuff is way better, you can also buy it frozen at the shop.)

One other thing we took for the sweaty drive back was a bottle of Cockta ($1.99, the website’s kind of incredible), which is a carbonated Slovenian soda that’s primarily flavored with dog rose hip along with eleven other herbs.

I’m still taking medication that alters the way I taste carbonation (for my chronic eye condition), so this was all Davida, but she loved it. She describes Cockta as not being quite as herbal as Kofola, the Czech soda we first tried at Cafe Prague, and that it tastes more akin to something like Pepsi.

The last thing I’ll note is that I’ve never seen Davida more excited about visiting a place for the newsletter. She’s obviously game for trying everything with me, but there’s something about Sandy’s Bakery and Deli that really clicked for her. Even when we got back and all the food was put away, she kept remarking about how much she was looking forward to the leftovers, which of course, we had for dinner.

Sandy’s is by no means new, except to us. According to the bakery’s Facebook page, the shop’s been open for nearly three decades, but it’s not clear when that information was last updated, so it could be well past that by now.

I do still feel a little bummed about the fact that we missed out on the whole roasted lamb when we visited, though, so that just means we’ll have to head back soon. We’ll just make sure to go early, since we learned our lesson this time.

Sandy’s Bakery and Deli
5857 W Lawrence Ave
Chicago, IL 60630
(773) 794-1129

Hours:
Wednesday - Saturday: 9:00 a.m. - 7:00 p.m.
Sunday: 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Closed Monday and Tuesday

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Every other edition’s behind ye old paywall, but that just means a subscription gets you double the content, which I think is pretty fair since I publish almost weekly.

And just like many of you, I’ll be glued to current events this week, likely stressed out. One of you needs to remind me to step away from the computer and go take a walk. Hang in there, everyone. I love you guys.