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| - Sadly, this is not the awesome you're looking for.
Rakia is the stock "everyone drinks it" Serbian booze - fruit brandy, basically - and this place does have several varieties on offer. If you've never had it and it sounds like your bag, pop in and they'll sell you some.
But they'll charge you too much for it. $8-15 a drink for what is culturally, in Serbia, somewhere between bathtub moonshine and table wine. You're outta luck if you want to stray to more familiar ground, too, as their beer selection is anemic - I didn't get a chance to check their wines.
To soak up your booze, they have a menu of plates from the tiny to the big and shareable, and the menu descriptions sound lovely. Table bread with paprika pork drippings instead of butter. A Serbian sausage plate with venison, wild boar, and lamb. And, at market price ($28 in our case), a suckling pig platter. Where the description soar, the delivery is weak. The sausages are difficult to discern from one another, with seasoning drowning out the meats. The suckling pig was really greasy and over-breaded; we didn't finish it, though only partly because of the preparation.
The real reason we ran out of the place was that around 8pm on a Thursday the live music started, amplified through the smallish space, and made conversation impossible. Our server was nice, and nudged the volume down when we asked, but it's clear they were going for a loud and happening feel and it really just missed us completely. We settled up and sprinted down the street to The Comrade for cocktails and kimchi rice.
I like the idea behind a Serbian bar in Leslieville. I want this place to get better, and might give it another shot in a few months once they've settled in. But the food doesn't justify the prices, nor does the cachet of a far-away moonshine culture.
Pro-tip: the servers are quite nice, and happy to make recommendations. If you're gonna go here against my warnings, at least help them help you.
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