The Beauty of Balkan Baking
The chef-friends behind Balkan Treat Box and Hani’s Bakery dish on their longstanding friendship, the complexity of Balkan food, and their upcoming Platform by JBF dinner
Loryn Nalic and Miro Uskokovic at their first dinner together in 2020. (Photo: Spencer Pernikoff)
Tue, October 13, 2026
Breaking bread is a powerful conduit to making friends and building community. This sentiment rings especially true for St. Louis chef Loryn Nalic and New York City chef Miro Uskokovic, who bonded over their shared Balkan heritage after an introduction from James Beard Award–winning restaurateur Danny Meyer.
Back in 2018, Nalic was operating Balkan Treat Box as a food truck in Webster Groves, a suburb of St. Louis, Missouri, where she showcased the flavors of her husband Edo’s native Bosnia and the Balkans through wood-fired breads and meat dishes. Uskokovic, who is originally from Serbia, was then the executive pastry chef at Meyer’s acclaimed Gramercy Tavern in New York City. They first connected over Instagram, then cemented their friendship in 2020, when Nalic invited Uskokovic to St. Louis to cook a Balkan meal together as part of her Good Magic dinner series and to celebrate the one-year anniversary of Balkan Treat Box’s brick-and-mortar location.
In the years since, the pair have remained close, supporting one another as they’ve navigated new businesses and cheering each other’s accomplishments. Nalic and her husband have since opened Telva at The Ridge, a Balkan-inspired cafe and event space, and in 2026, Nalic won the James Beard Award for Best Chef: Midwest. Uskokovic, a 2020 James Beard Award nominee® for Outstanding Pastry Chef, currently co-owns hotspot Hani's Bakery + Café with his wife Shilpa, where the menu is inspired by his mother’s cakes and Serbian childhood, as well as the forthcoming Neighbors Famous Ice Cream, both in New York City.
The pair will reunite this month in New York City for a collaboration dinner at Platform by JBF, where they will showcase the dynamic wood-fired flavors, abundant hospitality, and richness of Balkan cooking and baking. Ahead of their dinner, the chef-friends spoke about the complexity of Balkan cuisine, their favorite Balkan bakes, and why Balkan food is coming into its own stateside.
Uskokovic preparing a PB&J cake at Hani's Bakery.
Can you each introduce yourselves and tell us about your restaurants/bakeries?
Loryn Nalic: My name's Loryn Nalic. I have Balkan Treat Box and Telva. We started as a food truck in Webster Groves in St. Louis, Missouri.
Miro Uskokovic: And she makes the best ćevapis in the world! I'm Miro Uskokovic, I’m the chef/owner Hani's Bakery and soon to be Neighbors Famous Ice Cream.
Tell us how you first met and became friends.
Nalic: I knew about Miro long before he knew about me, I'm sure. Danny Meyer is from St. Louis, and Miro was working at Gramercy Tavern; I think through talking about restaurants and cities, we got mentioned, and I started messaging him on Instagram and we became friends. In 2019, I started a dinner series and wanted to cook with Miro to showcase more of the food from our region. We ended up doing this really fun dinner [in 2020], and that solidified our friendship. He's kind of stuck with me forever now.
Uskokovic: Yeah, I've always loved people doing food from where I come from. I remember Danny coming to me and saying, 'Hey, there's this amazing restaurant that serves the food from your region, so you should check it out.’ They are such amazing, lovely people. I genuinely do not joke when I say it's probably the best ćevapi I've ever had. It is quite remarkable, especially for someone who wasn't born there. I'm so happy that we got to meet her and her whole family, and to spend some time with them—and to do this again together.
Nalic: When [the Platform team] asked if there was somebody that I wanted to consider collaborating with, he was the only person I thought of. So, I was happy that you said yes—thank you!
Uskokovic: Of course I'll say yes! Always.
Can you start off by helping us define the word ‘Balkan’ and what Balkan cuisine is?
Uskokovic: Balkan comes from the Balkan Mountain range that runs from Slovenia all the way, I believe, up till Turkey. And it became a geopolitical term with the Balkan Wars in the 1990s. This part of the world is in a central geographical position, so it's always been a hotbed of conflicts and invasions. And I think that is reflective in our food as well. You see a huge diversity of influences, from Italians to Austro-Hungarians to Ottomans, and Greece, one of the oldest civilizations. In the south, and the areas that were part of the Ottoman Empire, you’ll see a lot of similarities to Middle Eastern food. In the north, where I come from, you see a lot of Austro-Hungarian and Italian influence, because that was part of their empires.
Nalic at the 2026 James Beard Awards. (Photo: Eliesa Johnson)
Can you share a little bit more about your Balkan heritage and your shared love of Balkan baking traditions?
Nalic: My husband's family is Bosnian. I obviously am still learning, but I've adopted a lot of the things that brought them the most comfort. We do this wood-fired bread called somun. It’s almost like pita bread; it's a little softer and has a little bit of chew. It goes hand-in-hand with ćevapi; those are essentially little kebabs, kofta. Then of course, bourek [flaky pastry filled with minced meat, cheese, or spinach].
Uskokovic: I was born and raised in the north of Serbia, in a small town called Vrbas, an hour away from our capital, Belgrade. I loved my childhood—it was always filled with food. My mother was a great baker. She loved making elaborate cakes, like what I now hear called medovic, a [layered] honey cake, or Reforma Torta which is on the [Platform] menu—it's a Yugoslavian chocolate–walnut cake that was a symbol of socialism. We also make both of those desserts at Hani's. One thing I fondly remember is cremșnit [also known as krempita, a custard-based center sandwiched between flaky, crispy layers].
Nalic: My mouth is watering.
Uskokovic: And rice pudding, too. If there’s one dish I’ll request for my last meal, it's rice pudding, or sutlijaš. I also love šampita, which is a meringue [with a light sponge cake base].
Why do you think there are such strong baking traditions in the Balkans?
Uskokovic: Again, if you think about who invaded us, it's Italians, Austro-Hungarians, and Ottomans, which all have a strong bread culture. And there are three religions, Eastern Orthodox, Catholicism, and Islam, all with different holidays and times and dates when they celebrate—and there's always desserts, breads, and cakes.
Nalic: The thing I find the most fascinating from a baking and sweets perspective is that sugar syrup is a preservation method. You’re talking about desserts that are still relevant and delicious today, even though we have modern refrigeration. They soak cookies, breads, pastries, nuts, and fruit.
Why do you think that Balkan food and culinary traditions are resonating in the U.S.?
Nalic: I think it's 100% curiosity. America's a melting pot, and it's becoming a bigger melting pot. People feel a certain responsibility to get to know people around them, and I would argue that one of the easiest—and tastiest—ways to do so is through their food. Also, I think the food from the region is delicious, and there's a lot of familiarity that people don't realize. If you named a dish from the Balkan region, I could tell you what dish it would remind you of.
Uskokovic: I think we have to credit millennials for shaping the way the Americans eat, because they were adventurous to travel. We have seen millennials venturing out to Croatia, Albania, Bosnia—wanting to explore and coming back and wanting to recreate that. People are a lot more open to trying different things than ever, from food to drinks to coffee; I think Gen Z is continuing to further that too.
Pide, a dish with Ottoman origins, from Balkan Treat Box.
Can you tell us about your Platform menu and how you approached collaborating on it?
Nalic: Sometimes for stuff like this we tend to want to do a bunch of crazy or fancy things. The heart of what Balkan food is, is family-style feasts. And Miro gave me the confidence to roll with that. We both agreed on giving diners what we know is a Balkan feast and Balkan hospitality: a table full of food, a party, and unapologetically meat-forward.
Miro: At a lot of restaurants in our region, people will oftentimes say, 'Just give me a little bit of everything,' because we are used to big, communal spreads. Part of our culture and food—and what Loryn really excels at—is the bread, food cooked on the grill, and meat cooked in a fire-burning oven. I told her, 'You have to do cevapi'—it's one of the best I've ever had. I like highlighting the greatest hits. You can have a 30-day dinner and have a different food every single day, and that still won't fully showcase what [Balkan] food is.
What makes Loryn's ćevapi so special?
Uskokovic: Anything that is simple is always the most difficult to make. It's about the process—grinding the meat, shaping the cevapi; some people add water, some add baking soda. It's kind of almost like a force meat with a little bit of sponginess and juiciness, always cooked over a grill. She really nailed the flavor, but more importantly, she nailed the texture. Because if you don't emulsify it correctly, once you cook it, the juices can leach out, and it could just be a spongy, rubbery, and dry thing. But hers are delicious.
Nalic: They have a nice bounce.
Uskokovic: They're very juicy. They have all the lovely char that you associate with ćevapi. But I think what makes it even more special is somun [flatbread]. Back home, they use commercial flour—correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you use Central Milling flour?
Nalic: Yeah. This is an exceptional flour from a Midwest mill that has a lovely, nutty flavor.
What are you hoping to share with Platform diners? Is there anything you hope they walk away with?
Nalic: I hope they walk away with an understanding of Balkan hospitality, because I've never experienced anything like it in my life. It’s almost like you have this grandma that's in your head, or your auntie or your mom, pushing you to eat, eat, eat! We joke about it, but there's something really beautiful about wanting somebody to feel full and happy and excited about the night. I hope we can do that.
Uskokovic: I also hope that we can walk away from this dinner having convinced Loryn and Edo to come to New York and open a Balkan Treat Box here in the East Village.
Is there anything else you'd like to share about your friendship?
Nalic: From a food standpoint, if I ever needed to bounce something off Miro, I know that he would be fully open to that. It gives me more confidence to know that if I'm taking a risk on something, I can call him and he'll be honest with me. In our industry, that's invaluable.
Uskokovic: I wish you both would call me more, anytime, please! It's been amazing to see the trajectory of her career and achievements. When we started talking, it was just a food truck, and now you have three spaces, and you won a James Beard Award this year. Even though we see each other only once a year in person, I consider her a close friend. She's talented, ambitious, and hardworking—and that's rare to find all together. I really wish her all the best, and I'm so excited for us to work together again, six years later.
Nalic: You know how some people think about what it would be like if their [favorite] celebrity knew them and could talk about them? That's how I feel right now. I'm like, 'I can't believe he's saying this about me!’
Uskokovic: I’m not [a celebrity]! You are—you're a big celebrity in your own right!
