"Come hungry and with an open heart," urge flyers advertising
Slovenia's first Roma restaurant.
More than impressing food critics, the Romani Kafenava (Roma
coffeeshop), which opened last week in the northern city of
Maribor, aims to build ties with the local community and offer hope
to an impoverished minority.
"The point of this kind of social enterprise is to integrate
socially vulnerable groups and teach them to work. And future
customers should bear that in mind," Stefan Simoncic, head of the
Epeka NGO, which backed the restaurant.
Located in a 19th-century brick building that once belonged to the
Austrian-Hungarian railway company, the restaurant recruited people
with little experience, most of whom had never held down a job
before.
"Our waiters and cooks are not professionals, they would never get
a job in a (regular) restaurant. Most of them never finished
school," Simoncic noted.
Slovenia has a small Roma population of close to 10,000. But
unemployment in the community stands at a massive 97 percent,
compared with 13 percent for the rest of the country, the
wealthiest of the former Yugoslav republics.
And many Roma -- often known as gypsies -- live in abject poverty,
though with some state support.
The restaurant, which hopes to showcase Roma culture, gastronomy
and hospitality, is a life line for many of its 15-member
staff.
At a modest opening ceremony that coincided with International Roma
Day on April 8, the staff -- including six waiters dressed in
burgundy and black uniforms -- eagerly waited to start serving
guests for the first time after months of preparation.
"I'm very glad to have a job here," 22-year-old waiter Esad Beciri
told AFP, excited like most of his colleagues at the prospect of
regular work.
In a corner of the rustically decorated restaurant, fortune teller
Radmila awaited customers with their cups of Turkish coffee to
predict their future.
The menu promises a wide range of Balkan specialities with a Roma
twist: barbecued meat, soups, stuffed peppers and Turkish sweets
like baklava or tulumba semolina doughnuts.
"The food will be excellent but prices will be reasonable. It would
be insane to go for an elite public in Maribor," said Rastko
Zdravkovic, the restaurant's non-Roma manager, who has more than 20
years of experience in the field.
No pork is served since most Roma here are Muslims who came from
Kosovo in the 1980s, when Maribor was one of the then Yugoslavia's
main industrial centres.
- 'We have to succeed' -
Dzevrija Mazreti worked in a nearby restaurant and a hotel before
she was hired as a cook at Romani Kafenava, but her main experience
was cooking for weddings and funerals.
"You know, we never order catering, we cook it ourselves and for
quite a bunch of people," said the cheerful, squarely built woman.
"We've come a long way and I assure you we'll all give 100 percent
to succeed," added Fatmir Beciri, a Roma community
representative.
At an early stage of the project, non-Romas in the neighbourhood
near central Maribor opposed the restaurant and even sent anonymous
threats. Protests in November almost succeeded in blocking the
whole project.
"But many of them have changed their minds and have come to
apologise," Fatmir Beciri said. "We Roma, we forgive and
forget."
Romani Kafenava's success in Maribor, which has one of Slovenia's
highest unemployment rates, could open the way for similar
restaurants in the eurozone country and elsewhere, its organisers
hope.
"We will succeed, we have to," Mazreti said confidently.