Local Farmers’ Market

Food Tasting Tour at the Best Outdoor Food Market in Serbia

1.5 hour – EUR 40

Seven Unique Tastes Right From Producers

You’re invited to a cheerful food tasting at local farmers’ markets in Belgrade. We take you to the stalls of the producers whose happy customers we’ve been for years.

You’ll eat what we eat. Come and taste burek, ajvar, fresh cheese, kajmak, čvarci, žito and baklava.

Tasting food at Kalenić farmers market, you’ll sense more than flavors: Belgrade locals hand-picking groceries, producers from Serbia cheering for their goodies, local customs and traditions, scents and colors of fresh produce, the mood of the season and talk of the town.

Your private guide Ksenija lives just 500m from Kalenić  farmers market. She’s been a regular for the last 15 years, happy to immerse herself in the market’s authentic atmosphere and share its tastiest bites with food enthusiasts from around the world.

Have Breakfast Like a Local in Belgrade

We start the tasting with burek, a phyllo pastry filled with cheese or meat. Or even one without filling, which is my personal favorite. The place where we’ll have it, straight from the oven, has been in business for 75 years, from grandfather to grandson Ivan, who still serves the customers behind the counter, after spending a night shift thinning the dough. 

Next taste stop is a stall with ajvar, a delicious red pepper spread some call veggie caviar. Mirjana and her daughter prepare it every August as a winter pantry staple, after an old family recipe. They source peppers from Southern Serbia, spend days in the garden roasting them on the grill, peeling the crust and then cooking the peppers on wooden stoves.

What Cheeses to Taste in Belgrade

At the farmers’ market, you’ll want to try something you can hardly find in a restaurant: fresh goat cheese. Our favorite comes from the hills around the town of Vršac, in North-East Serbia. You won’t believe that Anka milked the goats and skimmed the milk just 24 hours earlier!

The other dairy superstar we taste is kajmak from Western Serbia, a high-fat spread that tastes best when you let it melt a bit on warm, crunchy sourdough or corn bread. In summer, you’d want to slice fresh tomatoes on top.

Čvarci [t͡ʃʋǎːrt͜si]

Another fatty guilty pleasure is čvarci, similar to pork rind. Cracking and melting, an explosion of taste and texture even from a minimum dose. Most guests are particularly impressed by a variety called tobacco čvarci for its shape of thin strings and color, produced exclusivelly in Valjevo region  in Western Serbia.

Sweets to Taste in Belgrade

Next stall takes us to another third-generation maker-shop owner – Liljana. Ljiljana’s grandfather owned a pastry shop in the 1930s, and later her father brought the masters specializing in Oriental desserts from todays North Macedonia to Serbia.

Today, Liljana serves products of two ancient traditions.

One is žito or kolyivo, boiled wheat with nuts, with meaning rooted in the belief in Resurrection. The wheat is served at the family feast of the patron saint – a Serbian custom called slava, listed by UNESCO.

The other tradition is that of Oriental desserts, baklava and its relatives tulumbe, urmašice and kadaif. Their long history goes all the way back to Mesopotamia. These tasty sweets came to the Balkans with the Ottomans and have remained ever since.

Why is Farmers Market Tour More than Food Tasting

After food tasting at the farmers’ market, we take you around the neighbourhood, to show you the places where the locals eat out. You’ll discover the places where different generations of Belgrade locals come for a cup of coffee, a good meal, or a takeaway. From traditional Serbian cuisine to the innovative bistros with promising young chefs, you’ll end the tour knowing where to book the table.

Before choosing the place to eat you’d want to read about Serbian iconic traditional dishes and where they taste best. On the tour, you’ll hear about the centuries-old food traditions we still cherish.

Spending a morning with Belgraders at their favorite farmers market you’ll get to see their most authentic and relaxed selves. Going to farmers market every weekend is the locals’ favorite habit. So is the socialising after the market, sipping coffee for hours with close friends. Take our tour and soak in this unique Belgrade feeling of taking it easy.

Practical Info