One day at Bosnia Express, a crowd had gathered for a soccer match streamed over the Internet and projected on a screen. Young men in team jerseys drank beer, families had small children playing at their feet, and old men hunched at the bar, stealing worried glances at the game.
Wearing black aprons, the owners laughed and poured drinks, while their children brought out food, smiling, too. My wife and I were halfway through lunch when I realized that, except when the owners’ daughter took our order, no one was speaking English.
Boise has its share of ethnic restaurants, but it is rare here to sit right down in a pocket of another culture and feel so welcome.
Bosnia Express Caffe and Deli — or BoEx — is a self-described nightclub/neighborhood bar/grocery store/lunch spot. You can see all of this at once from the main dining room, down a little hallway from the market and past the immaculately clean kitchen.
There is the dark-wood bar, roped off from children, with uncommon beers and an espresso machine. There’s a back room with a pool table, and leather couches bunched around a flat-screen TV. On the opposite wall, by a mural of an Eastern European mountain town, is a stage with colored lights and a tiny mirror ball overhead.
In another corner of the cafe is a wall of imported beer and wine surrounded by wood casks. On a couple of recent visits, we enjoyed a Croatian beer called Karlovacko ($4 for a 20-ounce bottle), a medium golden lager a little like Stella Artois. Though there is no list, dozens of foreign beers and wines are available, as well as some domestics.
Bosnia Express claims to have the best gyros in town. I can only say theirs is the best I’ve had in town ... so far. First, the portion for $6.50 is colossal — double an average gyro. While most will be familiar with the beef and lamb meat, shaved from a rotating spool, as well as the usual lettuce and tomato, here instead of Greek feta cheese and yogurt tzatziki there is a dill herb mayonnaise. Best and least expected of all, this gyro comes not on a pita but on a round of soft, fresh bread, baked in-house daily.
The panini house special ($6.50) with sliced turkey and prosciutto also features fresh bread, your choice of a thick square of white or nutty wheat, and may outdo the gyro in size. The baguettes also are made in-house, and one with turkey pastrami ($6.50) also came hot from the panini press. To my knowledge, there is nothing especially Bosnian about these sandwiches — they are big, fresh and on great bread: a first-rate value. (There is a panini sandwich with Nutella hazelnut-chocolate spread, bananas and strawberries that I have not yet tried, but I will.)
The most unmistakably foreign item was a savory pastry called a burek. The meat version ($5.50) looks outwardly like a Danish, with coils of surprisingly elastic phyllo dough filled with seasoned ground beef, and some bright pickled red peppers on the side. Apart, neither pastry nor peppers did much, but eaten together, they gave each other a boost. (A trio of smaller spinach, cheese and potato burek are also available for $5.90.)
Twice we have ordered fries ($1.90 for plain, $2.90 topped with mozzarella, which didn’t add much), and though we knew these were just French fries like everywhere else, we liked them better at Bosnia Express.
Was it the room, the friendly service, the bread or the beer? Some magic mix of these elevates everything else. We will be back soon for the winter menu to try the beef goulash.
Though it is not strictly part of the restaurant, any talk of food would be incomplete without mentioning the small grocery store, packed with exotic oddities including marzipan-filled chocolates, pates, sausages, frozen meats, and fresh Gouda cheese. Most notably, you can purchase the whole menu of breads offered in the cafe. Two panini loaves run about $3 and should probably find their way home with you.
Bosnia Express has been open for six years but first was primarily a bar with an emphasis on live entertainment. Food was only introduced within the last year, and Boise is better for it.
Email Alex Kiesig at scene@idahostatesman.com.
