Veslo For Hearty Fare

Veslo Family Restaurant
Address: 100 Arnold Street, Kitchener
Open: Tuesday-Sunday at 11:30 a.m.
Cost: Dinner for two with beer is $40 before taxes and tip
Contact deets: 519-744-9292; veslofamilyrestaurant.com

Amuse-bouche: It is a fairly limited menu but one that is representative of the cooking of the Balkan region of Europe—and that means sweet and meaty with the distinctive cevapi sausages and rich and filling schnitzels stuffed with cheese.

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The first thing to do is order a 500 mL Nektar, originally a monk-brewed, light-bodied and crisp pilsner-style beer from Banjaluka. You know what they say: when in Veslo….

Veslo Family Restaurant pops up out of nowhere in a residential area in the Bridgeport sector of Kitchener, making it one of a few eastern European restaurants in Waterloo Region. Some would call the cuisine meaty, hearty, stick-to-the-ribs fare; others would call it heavy and plodding. Both descriptions are true—and I like that.

A good way to start; a good way to finish.

The menu of this family-operated venue starts with basic soups and salads including something called a shopska salad ($4 or $5) of south Slavic origin: roughly chopped pieces of cucumber, tomato, onion and green pepper are lightly dressed with oil and vinegar but with a very liberal, perhaps exceedingly so, blanketing of grated feta-cheese.

The Serbian salad is the same veg but holds the cheese grating. There are also a Caesar and Greek salads, as well as a goulash with or without bread and cheese ($5-$8).

The idiosyncratic lepinja, basically a Balkan flatbread, helps mark the cuisine. It is softer and fluffier than a pita and is a light yeasty bun-like bread—light until the creamy home-made cheese is added, that is. The bread is a traditional pairing with kabob-like cevapi of minced meat grilled sausages and their diminutive cousins cevapicici.

Veslo’s “Grill Menu” features the star attractions of the cuisine: grilled sausages, beef (minced and otherwise), pork schnitzels wrapped in bacon, meat and pork combinations stuffed with cheese, and grilled pork chops. A great old chap hailing from Yugoslavia, my neighbour rhymes off regularly, “I like the pig.” His 80 years tell me he’s got that right and that much is true about Veslo. It’s home-style family cooking and that is probably why the place has been successful.

Other selections include pork medallions and veg ($13), chicken tenders and fries ($7) and a tilapia dinner ($10). Simple ice cream and jam, chocolate and walnut crepes round out the dessert menu ($3-$5).

Lepinja bread is soft and cheesy (foreground), while shopska salad is a basic veg affair blanketed in a snow fall of freshly grated feta cheese.

Perhaps the best way to approach the Veslo menu is through the restaurant’s mixed grill combo platter—that makes it one terrific meat-fest. A “small” platter (and I use the word small advisedly) is $23 and is really too much food for two people. The large platter is $40 and must be immense indeed.
One of the unique dishes at Veslo is the Karadjordjeva schnitzel (small $9; large $13), and it would have to be unique because the story goes, in all its food-myth glory, that the chicken Kiev-like dish (but made with pork or veal) was whipped up in the spur of the moment and named for a Serbian aristocrat in the late 1950s. Food usually has wondrous stories swirling around it with little way to verify them, but let’s go with that.

The Veslo rendition of Karadjordjeva is firm and crisp pork schnitzel pack with drippy-oozy cream cheese (a variety of which is kajmak) that is indeed rich and creamy. Incidentally, I am not using the coined term drippy-oozy disparagingly at all: this hearty and rustic fare is for those not interested in counting calories.

A medallion of pork kabob also joins the platter and it’s nicely grilled and seasoned sitting amidst is porky-beefy platter brethren. Minced steak is a mediocre affair and though tasty enough and punctuated with onion bits it is really only a basic hamburger patty. Its saving grace is the distinct carbonized, grilled flavours.

The sign on the lawn in front of the restaurant offers a special on schnitzel at the time this column is being written, and I would estimate that is very likely a good deal because the Veslo schnitzel is indeed satisfying: light and very crisp breading yields to a moist tender interior of porkosity. It is without a doubt one of the best I’ve tasted in a while in a Region that generally knows from schnitzel.

Most notable among Balkan cooking, from Bosnia, Slovenia, Croatia and Montenegro, is the delectable and vigorously seasoned sausages cevapi. The platter includes four or five of the sausages and they are characterized by a deep grilled and charred flavour concealing a succulent, juicy interior. A street-meat style grilled pork sausage, spiced and garlicky, is also part of the platter.

Veslo oxymoron: This is a small sampler platter. This is meat-love. This is hearty fare. This is umami heaven.

Yet, among the most delicious of the items on the platter were the home fries which were lightly seasoned, crisp on the outside and fluffy inside. They were excellent. Add to that some basic white beans nestled in a deep and rich tomato and paprika-like sauce and that’s good, rustic eating.

So, really, the only way to approach this cooking is with a deep-seated love of meat and embracing all its umami glory. In each case, beef or pork, the protein was seasoned well and cooked properly. The only caveat I have to add here is perhaps some saltiness that is over the top in the preparation of the dishes. But that’s where the Banjaluka Nektar comes into play. A couple of times.