Zekin Salas - Krcedin, Serbia

After a morning of visiting some beautiful churches, we stopped in the small village of Krcedin, Serbia for a late lunch at Zekin Salas. Zekin means "rabbit" in Serbian and a fun mural on a wall shows rabbits reversing the food process, getting ready to roast a human on a spit, tying up dogs and putting them in pots and starting a fire under the spit. Contrary to the mural, a small hutch of meek rabbits was on display outside. Despite a beautiful day and a patio that could be used for seating, we were ushered inside for our meal. It seemed a little like stepping back into time, an inn of 100 years ago. 

Revenge of the rabbits

Small wood fence next to building is a rabbit hutch.

Inner view - our driver looks at the menu

We started off with salads and I got the first (of what turned out to be many) shopska salad of the trip.  It consisted of chopped cucumber, tomatoes, onions, vinegar, olive oil and smothered in a fluffily grated white cheese (probably sirene, but perhaps feta). This was the best shopska salad of the trip, perhaps because it was the first, and I wished I'd ordered two or three of them and forgotten the last of what I ordered. Judy ordered a salad with tomatoes, cucmber and onions mixed with some sort of pepper (perhaps jalapeno) and perhaps an Italian dressing. Although the ingredients of our two salads were very similar, hers was okay and mine was fabulous. The difference was the cheese and the dressing.  I am still on the hunt to re-create a shopska salad at home. 

First shopska salad of the trip - delicious

Judy's salad 

wonderful thick bread

We got a cheese plate with three types of white cheese. One was the same type of cheese on the shopska salad, one was a goat cheese and the other was quite bland. It was a lot of cheese and the only one I really liked was the sirene/feta, much of which I put into my salad to extend it. We found that in the Balkans, white cheese dominates. I only recall seeing blue cheese on a few occasions and a few times we saw some yellow cheese. 

three types of white cheese

Some of the more interesting menu items were not available (baked lamb and goose in wine), so I opted for the rabbit burrow plate, which was grilled vegetables such as onions, eggplant, tomatoes, and peppers. What I got was not what I expected. I got two breaded and fried (or perhaps baked, but they looked fried) patties, one with spinach inside and the other with eggplant and red pepper. They were pretty tasteless and I ended up adding some of the sirene/feta cheese to it as well. It had a large dolop of sour cream, some nice tasting mushrooms and some grated carrot and some sort of green. It was pretty forgettable. 

An inner view of the veggie patties.

Judy got stuffed rolled duck, sliced and in gravy with some sort of noodle. Her duck was better than my veggie patties, but it was pretty boring as far as duck goes. 

What stood out for me on this meal was the setting, which I really loved, and the shopska salad.