It’s one thing to call something an incomparable experience. It’s a rare thing for it to be true, but Three Brothers (2414 S. St. Clair St.) is that. Some of it is the remarkable origin story of this Bay View Serbian landmark. A native of war-torn Yugoslavia who also survived imprisonment in a Polish concentration camp, founder Milun Radicevic bought a Cream City brick building – a former Schlitz tied house with a globe perched on the structure’s turret – and in 1956 created this restaurant, naming it after his three sons. Eventually the eldest, Branko, would succeed his father in the business; now 11 years since Branko’s passing, Three Brothers is caringly operated by his widow, Patricia, and their children.
Legacy restaurants like Three Brothers are an endangered species that need to be protected as our shared community heritage.
“The less we touch things, the better” is a sentiment that Branko and Patricia’s daughter, Milunka – who works alongside her mother and her sister, Branislava, in the kitchen – has echoed over the years. That refers to both the atmosphere and the food. How many have settled into an old saloon chair at one of the 14 Formica-top dining tables over the last 70 years? Servers, some with hairnets covering their heads, are unhurried – the pace of modern life just doesn’t exist here.
Rooted in Radicevic family traditions, the menu is unchanging, reliable. The spinach and cheese burek ($26.50) – for me a nonnegotiable – is our appetizer, a savory golden phyllo pie cut into triangles. It’s mild and rich, the shell breaking into shards from the pressure of a fork, the inside all dense, moist, salty filling. The obligatory Serbian salad ($10.50) – chopped tomato, onion and green pepper under a comforter of shredded Serbian cheese the texture of ricotta salata – is crisp and creamy, a welcome counterpoint to the soft, stew-like main courses.
And those mains, they all beckon: chevapchichi (grilled sausage made from minced beef, $25.50), raznjici (pork shish kebab, $23.50), chicken paprikash with potato dumplings ($25), sarma – pickled cabbage leaves wrapped around a filling of beef and rice ($24.50). Maybe beef- and rice-stuffed peppers ($24.50), because who makes stuffed peppers anymore?!…