A Taste of Serbia returning to McKeesport
A wide variety of food will be available, with traditional Serbian music on Saturday.
St. Sava Serbian Orthodox Church of McKeesport will host its annual A Taste of Serbia festival this weekend, with everyone invited to enjoy some delicious Serbian dishes.
A Taste of Serbia is in its sixth year and will offer its typical lineup of Serbian foods and entertainment. Publicity coordinator Dorothy Ikach said it’s the perfect fall festival to check out.
“The general activities that people participate in during the summer have tapered off, and so this provides an opportunity to still come out to see people you know, enjoy the friendliness of our parishioners who will be working there,” Ikach said. “Since many of the summer activities are now over, it just provides another opportunity to get out and enjoy good food and see your friends and neighbors.”
A Taste of Serbia 2025 will be held from 3 to 7 p.m. Friday and noon to 7 p.m. Saturday at the church, which is located at 901 Hartman St.
Popular food items that will be available include cevaps, classic hand-rolled skinless meat sausages; burek, savory meat and cheese pie in phyllo dough; sarma, Serbian-style stuffed cabbage; grah i kupas, sauerkraut and red kidney bean soup; halushki, sauteed cabbage and onions with egg noodles; and hot sausage sandwiches.
Ikach said their famous hand-breaded haddock filet sandwich will only be available on Friday. The boneless, slow-roasted sliced lamb sandwich, another popular item, will be served both days.
The festival also offers a wide selection of pastries, including apple strudel, cheese-filled crepes, palacinke, sweet cheese strudel gibanica, nut rolls, apricot rolls and a lot more.
A full menu is available at www. stsavapa.org/. There’s no admission fee, and free parking can be found at the church and behind Auberle Family Center.
Those who come to the festival can eat inside the church hall or outside under a courtyard tent. Takeout orders will be available.
Orkestar Pobeda will provide traditional Serbian music from 3 to 7 p.m. Saturday.
“It’s a group of young men who have been together for several years,” Ikach said. “Some of them were former members of the Duquesne University Tamburitzans, so they’ve been playing and singing for several years now. People like to hear the music and enjoy these young men.”
Preparation for A Taste of Serbia takes several months, with work beginning in the summer. Ikach said it requires a lot of people to put together.
“There’s a couple of individuals that make the burek, and then they have a day of making the stuffed cabbages,” she said. “So it takes a lot of hands to put all that together. Then we’ll have a couple of guys that’ll come on Thursday because we open on Friday to slice the roasted lamb so that the lamb sandwiches can be made the next day.
“There are many steps along the way, and there’s always a core group of people and then a lot of others that come to help.”
A Taste of Serbia originated from McKeesport’s International Village, but they decided to host their own event at their church location for efficiency. According to Ikach, St. Sava had been one of the original churches to participate in International Village since the 1950s.
Despite some difficulties during the COVID-19 pandemic, Ikach said that the festival has been a success for them.
“Although we’d been participating in the Village for many years, we found that by having our event at the church, it saved a lot of manpower,” she said, “because we would have to transport our food from the church up to the village.
“So after our first event in 2020, we found that it was a great success, and people liked it. So we’ve just continued ever since. But it does provide additional funds for the church, the maintenance, and the general costs affiliated with keeping a church in good order.”
