Serbia
That’s right it says Serbia. I was as shocked as some of you probably are to find out we had a restaurant in the area that had Serbian dishes. Honestly I didn’t even know what those might be but it turns out the one I tried was good.
So the place du jour was the Intermezzo Pizzeria & Café. It’s on 10th St. in Charlotte and pretty easy to get to. It wasn’t very busy when I arrived and I was seated immediately. They probably have more seats outside than in and since it wasn’t too hot I opted to sit outside. The waiter was very nice and we discussed beer to start and I went with a La Fin du Monde from Canada. He also brought me a sample of the Blanche de Bruxelles which he thought would be refreshing on the warm sunny day. He was correct.
The outside view was traffic heavy but there were a couple of interesting looking businesses to liven up the scenery. The coffee place and tattoo parlor were pretty easy to get a bead on but I’m not sure what the White Rabbit is aside from colorful.
I had it narrowed down to two items on the menu and I appreciated the candor from the waiter with his thoughts on the two options. He mentioned that one was pretty plain and not that flavorful. So I went with the Karadjordjeva and skillet potatoes.
If you are like me and had no clue what a Karadjordjeva was until now let me enlighten you on this version. It is a pork cutlet pounded like schnitzel with ham and kajmak cheese rolled up inside, breaded with site made bread crumbs, pan seared and finished with dill tartar sauce. “Tartar sauce on my pork, that’s crazy” you say? So did I but figured what the heck and that was a gamble that paid off. As you can see from the dissection photo there was plenty of ham and cheese rolled up in this thing and with that squeeze of lemon plus the dill tartar sauce the whole thing was very tasty. I don’t want to give short shrift to the skillet potatoes. They would have gone great with any meal. Cooked with a little onion and fried enough to have some light crunch in spots, tender throughout and salted just right so it was a good accompaniment but not competition for the main dish.
Overall I really liked it but for me I think it would be better as an evening meal rather than lunch on a warm spring day. I will say the pizza smelled good so if I’m back in this neighborhood I think I’ll have to give one of those a try. My streak of good places to dine continues and if you are interested their web link is below and if you want an interesting fact on Serbia check out Tell Me More.