Rumors Cafe

🇧🇦 BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA / On the second floor of a building full of doctors offices, the flavors of the Balkans find a home in Encino.

🇧🇦 BOSNIA AND HERZEGOVINA
📍 16311 Ventura Blvd., 
Encino, San Fernando Valley
🅿️ Parking in building
🥤 No Alcohol

📸 All photos by Jared Cohee
for Eat the World Los Angeles

If you are the type of person who has happily traveled in the Balkans and maybe spent a couple decades of your life in a city where these foods were readily available, you might feel something of an emptiness from Los Angeles. While they are available here and there, the foods of this region are pretty sparse. When a place opens up it is like a beacon sent to the sky, but rather than the shape of a bat it takes on the spiral phyllo dough features of burek.

It might be weird to find Bosnian food at the cafe in a building full of doctors, but by the end of your meal you will feel like you have just enjoyed hospitality next to the Old Bridge in Mostar. The Bosnian women who run the place are family through marriage, and really make it feel like you are in one of their homes.

While the main focus of the cafe is to provide quick meals to medical professionals and their customers, the Bosnian foods that have been slipped onto the menu are a lot more interesting. Readers of this website will be happy to find three varieties of burek made daily, and will probably pass on the deli sandwiches and panini.

Each burek is served with a cup of bright yogurt that is cut with garlic, cucumber, and dill, the perfect dip for the slightly greasy pastry. Choice number one is the spinach burek ($11.99, below), which tucks these greens into phyllo dough with mild white cheese, a combination called zeljanica in Bosnian.

You can also choose to get the cheese on its own, or opt for the beef burek ($12.99, above) if you need some protein. The dough is quite thin so the top remains crispy while the bottom takes in the juices of the spiced minced meat. Thankfully, she cuts it up into manageable pieces and serves the pastry with a fork and knife. Just as with the spinach version, healthy dunks into the yogurt create perfect bites.

If your doctor happens to be in this building, you might find yourself begin to make excuses to see them on certain days of the week. On Wednesdays they make an excellent version of grah ($8.95, below), which goes by the name “Bosnian Heritage Bean Stew” on the menu.