Burger Diplomacy in Belgrade

If you know anything about Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, it’s that it has a great cocktail bar scene. A few other facts: This city of almost 1.4 million inhabitants is often compared to Berlin for its vibrant nightlife, clubs are often carved out of ramshackle former factories and warehouses or on boats moored along the shores of the Sava River. It was the capital of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. And oh yeah, most Americans might faintly remember the U.S.-led NATO campaign of 1999 that blanketed the city and large swaths of Serbia with bombs. For most Serbs, especially of the older variety, that bombing campaign is more than a faint memory. And for that reason, many Serbs of a certain generation have a long-held distaste for things American.

Which is why I was rather surprised to see that a festival dedicated to the hamburger, that most Yankee-doodle-dandy of American food, had recently sprung up in Belgrade. The Belgrade Burger Festival. It seemed like a questionable idea, at least to me. Hamburgers cooling Serbian scorn for the United States would be about the same as Donald Trump changing his mind about that wall along the southern border after eating a particularly good taco. But there have been worse ideas. And so, could this “burger diplomacy” change the hearts of Serbs who remember being bombed by NATO aircrafts?

I traveled to Belgrade to find out. The first thing I did was locate the one man behind this effort, Miloš Vukšić, the 37-year-old owner of Belgrade restaurant Endorfin. We met during the first day of the festival, located in a park in the shadow of Kalemegdan, the medieval fortress overlooking the confluence of the Sava and Danube Rivers. He got the idea for the burger festival during the pandemic lockdown. “There were a few negative comments about us promoting American products,” he said. “But look around,” he added, fanning his hand, palm up, at the hundreds of people chomping burgers and drinking beer. “Burgers are making a lot of people happy, too.”

I don’t think change happens this easily, but okay. He was right: there were happy people and there were burgers. The burger festival boasted nine different burger kiosks, most of which hail from the Serb capital, but also a burger-making team from Novi Sad in northern Serbia and one from Veraždin, Croatia. The latter was a curious choice since Serbia and Croatia were set on a mutual self-destruction in the first half of the 1990s in the midst of the break-up of Yugoslavia. Today relations between the two countries are better, but tensions remain.

Travis Meeks holds a burger. Photo by David Farley

There was an American burger chef from Missouri flown in to flip burgers for the hungry crowd. Travis Meeks won the hearts and taste buds of many people at the festival with this “All-American Burger.” One big surprise was that one stand was offering a chopped cheese sandwich. A few years ago, some foodie hipsters in New York ventured up to Harlem and “discovered” this long-time Harlem bodega staple. Soon after, the chopped cheese began popping up on menus in Brooklyn. And now, apparently, in Belgrade, too.

How, though, did the gourmet hamburger got so popular in Serbia that anyone thought a burger festival was a good idea?

Let’s go back 25 years. Long before the gourmet hamburger became a thing—both in North America and in Europe—I was living in Prague in the mid ‘90s. A young couple were interviewing me about giving them private English lessons. Stanislav, upon learning I was American, asked me: “Are you a hamburger eater? We don’t want a hamburger eater for a teacher.” I got the metaphor, but with a straight face, I replied: “I haven’t eaten a burger in years.” I got the job and Stanislav and Miša ended up becoming dear friends of mine. Stan, as I called him, later explained his “hamburger eater” metaphor was meant to describe someone who was ignorant to culture and history and who was “susceptible to propaganda—both from government and advertising.” It’s as if I were applying for a job at the CIA. But the point was clear: in a region that had recently seen Soviet occupiers retreat and American fastfood burger chains begin to colonize post-communist cities, people like Stanislav were understandably skeptical.

But since that time, the burger landscape has changed dramatically. It all began in 2001 when Gallic super chef Daniel Boulud decided to take some high-quality ground beef, stuff it with some foie gras, slap it in between a bun and then put it on the menu for an eyebrow-raising price at his Midtown Manhattan restaurant db Bistro Moderne. The gourmet burger was born.

In the decade that followed, lavishly priced gourmet burgers became an ubiquitous, de rigueur menu item at nearly every restaurant in North America. Food bloggers compiled lists of cities’ best burgers. And then in the next decade, the teens, the gourmet burger hit Europe. Hamburgers no longer represent mindless conspicuous consumption, cultural imperialism, and low-quality fast food. Much to young Stanislav’s chagrin, we’ve all became “hamburger eaters,” but in the best possible way.

Unless, of course, you’re Serbian. McDonald’s first fired up its burners in Belgrade in 1988, the company’s first venture in a Communist country. It took much longer for the gourmet burger to arrive, though. That was just a few years ago. Uroš Živković, 39-year-old chef at Endorfin in Belgrade said, “There was a time when people here were boycotting McDonald’s because it’s American. Time tends to heal things and I think people here are getting over that. Also, when something makes us feel good, as a good burger does, it changes attitudes.”

So there is a bit of edible diplomacy going on, after all. Živković’s comments were echoed by nearly everyone I talked to at the burger festival—that, yes, there is some lingering resentment toward America among older people but not so much for younger generations. The most challenging thing about introducing the gourmet burger to Serbs, many burger chefs told me, was making them feel comfortable with eating medium-rare ground beef. “We’ve had to educate people,” said Djordje Vučenovic, the chef and owner of Fat Boys, whose burger—spoiler alert—actually won the “best burger” competition at the festival. “Serbs love grilled meat but we overcook it, so being handed a patty of beef that is pink inside, freaks people out here.”

In some ways, it’s not too weird that Serbs have embraced the burger. After all, one of the most common dishes here is pljeskavica, a grilled patty that is usually made with beef and pork and/or lamb. The rub, though, as mentioned above, is that Serbs cook the hell out of it, unlike the gourmet burger which is generally (and best) served medium rare.

On the final night of the festival, I still felt uncertain that any food item, let alone a hamburger, could actually bring people together as a force for good, as a tool for positive diplomacy. That evening, I ended up in a conversation with a Serb and a Croat. The beer and rakija, the potent fruit brandy that is ubiquitous in the region, were flowing that night, so I can’t recall everything that was discussed. In fact, at times I had tuned out to look around and see people enjoying burgers. But I then came back into the conversation when the Croat began telling the Serb that Serbia did something way better than in his country. She repaid the compliment in kind, telling him what she loved about Croatia. And just then the female Serb said, “Oh my god, I can’t believe I’m saying nice things about Croatia to a Croatian! I’ve never had a conversation like this.” The Croatian responded with a similar comment.

And then they hugged, toasted their glasses of rakija, and said živjeli, “cheers” in Serbian and Croatian.

In the end, the burger did end up being a diplomatic tool—just not exactly in the way I was expecting.