By CAM LUCADOU-WELLS
SOME people initially mistake JB Charcoal Grill for a famous mass-produced burger chain but they couldn’t be further from the truth.
The traditional Yugoslav restaurant on Stud Road, Dandenong, makes its hand-made burgers with slow love, and is getting a well-earned reputation for quality ingredients and generous serves.
Most diners prefer to pre-order as the kitchen staff slowly sizzle the 30-centimetre smoked pljeskavice pattie, made of a fine, lean pork and beef mince combination from Springvale’s Dunav Butchery.
It is slid into a long bun filled with roasted capsicum and feta spread, oiled lettuce, garlic-marinated roast capsicum slices and onion.
Natasha Trkulja had been working in the JB kitchen for some time before she and husband Danny bought the business some years ago.
She grew up learning to cook and prepare the traditional way in the Serbian village Vojvodina.
She recommends a side drink of kefir – a yoghurt culture made by Mountain Shepherd Cheese in Dandenong – to help digest the filling meals.
Otherwise there are imported drinks such as cockta – a type of cola – and juices.
The kitchen’s cooks are steeped in the traditional Bosnian and Serbian-style cooking.
One prepares the burek – a layered bread built of dough that has been miraculously stretched a metre long and membrane-thin over the hotplate.
She sprinkles on some filling, then folds the dough into a parcel, which is later enveloped by three more layers of dough and filling.
The bureks emerge from the oven chunkier than a thick-crust pizza, filled with halal beef, mushroom and onion or feta and spinach – or for sweets – cherry or apple.
Soon the restaurant will launch a ‘party-sized’ burek – a metre long, three-kilo slab that can be cut into smaller morsels.
Often they’re cooking up a group order of 50 cevapi – a row of smoked sausages in a bun – and smoked strips of pork loin.
JB Charcoal Grill is at 30 Stud Road, Dandenong. Phone 9794 0909.
Do you know of a delicious delicacy that deserves wider exposure? Let us know at journal@starnewsgroup.com.au
