A New Balkan Restaurant Aims to Provide a Positive Representation of the Region to Crowds in River North

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When Ivan Iričanin came to Washington, D.C. from his native Serbia in 2005, he was shocked at the lack of Balkan restaurants in the area. “I would like to eat my food, and it was not available,” he recalls. So he opened Ambar to showcase the cuisine of his corner of southeastern Europe and to provide a positive connotation for the Balkans instead of the “wars, bombing, and revolution” that he always found people thought of in connection with the area.

“It was not just that it was not represented, it was misrepresented,” he says.

Now he is bringing Ambar to Chicago, where there are certainly restaurants representing the city’s large Balkan communities, but perhaps not many that explicitly cater to people outside those communities. Chicago has “one of the largest Balkan populations outside the Balkans,” Iričanin points out. But, he says, “looking at Chicago, there’s so many [Balkan] restaurants and bars, but they’re all very traditional, and [many are] in the suburbs, and I didn’t find any in prime areas like downtown and River North.” (Exceptions are Rose Mary in Fulton Market, which is a Croatian-inflected Italian restaurant, and the Croatian Doma Cafe on the Near North Side.)

Ambar’s Chicago location is in the former Etta space at 700 N. Clark St. in River North and opens April 1 for lunch, brunch, and dinner. Like the three D.C.-area outposts, it offers a wide variety of cheffy small plates in an “unlimited” format in which a table pays a flat fee per person for their choice of any order or re-order of dishes. The format has its roots in a style of Balkan service in which dishes keep coming to the table at regular periods, according to Iričanin. But the appeal for him was to make unfamiliar dishes accessible.

“It allows you to taste many different dishes and get familiar, kind of explore the Balkans,” he explains. “I was scared someone was going to order stuffed sour cabbage with pork belly and be like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t finish this, I don’t like it,’ and then not come back.”

The menu is broken up into categories such as spreads – featuring the ubiquitous dairy-based kajmak and roasted pepper ajvar – grilled kebabs and sausages like ćevapi; vegetables reflecting the bounty of the Mediterranean climate like eggplant moussaka and the chopped salad of pepper, onion, tomato, cucumber, and feta called shopska; and baked goods such as the traditional coiled, stuffed pastry known as burek. Part of the reason the Serbian Iričanin decided to open a Balkan rather than just Serbian restaurant was so that he could include seafood; Serbia is landlocked.

“When you say Balkan, for me, that’s anything from Slovenia to Macedonia,” he says. “It’s the same language, same people. I don’t think that has borders. That’s kind of former Yugoslavia. What I also wanted to [say] with that is, it’s Balkan. It’s one thing. It cannot be separated.”

Immigrants from the Balkans have been coming to Chicago and establishing communities since the nineteenth century; Mayor Michael Bilandic was Croatian. Traces are evident throughout the city, even if they can be easy to overlook: at St. Jerome Croatian Catholic Church in Armour Square; on the billboards for Vrdolyak Law Group, the family firm of the prominent former alderman Ed Vrdolyak; in the acclaimed works of Aleksander Hemon, a Bosnian immigrant who often sets his books in Chicago; in the small storefronts selling burek and ćevapi; and perhaps even in the aroma of espresso, since the influential restaurateur Jovan Trbojevic might have introduced the espresso machine to the city.

Immigrants continue to come here from the Balkans. Jelena Prodan, who put together the wine list for Ambar in Chicago, like Iričanin barely spoke English when she arrived in America from Serbia, as she recounted when she was named Sommelier of the Year at Chicago’s Jean Banchet Awards this year. The S.K.Y., Apolonia, and Valhalla sommelier spotlights lesser-known wines from the Balkans on the menu she compiled for Ambar.

“We want to find local producers to showcase some wines that people would not find anywhere else,” Iričanin says.

Ambar also celebrates the Balkan fruit brandy rakia, both on its own and in cocktails by James Beard Award semifinalists UnOrdinary Hospitality, which has a Bosnian partner. Rakia is good “after dinner, before dinner, when you wake up, before you go to sleep,” Iričanin says with a laugh.

It’s another aspect of the “Balkan hospitality” that Iričanin wants to share with the world. He has even opened up an Ambar in Belgrade, less for locals and more as a way for tourists to experience Balkan food in an accessible setting. But Chicago was always the goal, after success in D.C., he says. “Chicago was always my dream, to open there.”