Persian restaurant opens in Amherst, where to eat Balkan cevapi
Saturdays through October, an international farmers’ market sprouts in the parking lot of the M&T Bank parking lot at 130 Grant St.
Founded in Orchard Park in 2019, Providence Farm Collective has given immigrant farmers a way to return to the land, feed their families, and pass on their culture to their children. “With 31 farms, a demonstration plot, and more than 200 farmers, our collective effort is not just about growing crops — it’s about nurturing communities and preserving cultural heritage,” said executive director Kristin Heltman-Weiss.
Providence Farm Collective plots are cultivated by people who grew up growing vegetables as a way of life. At its Orchard Park farm store, produce and honey is available 3 p.m.-7 p.m. Monday and 11 a.m.-4 p.m. Thursdays, through October.
Saturdays on Grant Street, the farmers offer Buffalo cooks produce that you can’t buy anywhere else in town.
Every week, Providence farmers offer the fruit of their labor: tomatoes, hot peppers, sweet peppers, kale, chard, cabbage, collard greens, onions, garlic, squash, beans, and okra are standard. Less common include African maize, speed potato leaves, African eggplant, amaranth, jute leaves, and mboga chungu, a sort of nightshade grown in East and Central Africa.
Vendors accept cash, SNAP/food stamps, and Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program vouchers.
On Grant Street, 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Sept. 6 will be Providence Farm Collective’s harvest festival. There will be dancing and music from Nusantara Arts, food from Zelalem Gemmeda’s Abyssinian Ethiopian Cuisine and the West Side Bazaar’s Soul Boxx, a backpack giveaway for kids, and more family activities.
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REVIEW: Persian cuisine has joined the Amherst menu, as a young couple who met as students at the University of Buffalo open Zereshk in the Maple Forest Plaza. Koobideh kebabs, herby ghormeh sabzi lamb-and-kidney-bean stew, and saffron ice cream are just the beginning. (Wednesday, for patrons.)
ASK THE CRITIC
Q: This summer we took a trip to Split, Croatia. Since we got back, I have been wondering if there is a place in Buffalo that serves food like cevapi and borek. Help me out? I miss it.
Robert Anthony, Buffalo, via email
A: Since Balkan Dining shuttered, Buffalo has no cevapi restaurants. However, an hour’s drive north will sort you out.
In Etobicoke, a Toronto suburb, and a smaller, closer outpost in Oakville, Mrakovic Fine Foods offers Balkan cuisine just across the Canadian border. Balkan immigrants to Canada in 1994, the Mrakovic family opened its original deli-restaurant-grocery in 2003.
Besides the stubby skinless beef sausages known as cevapi, served on griddles housemade bread, Mrakovic offers borek pastry in beef, cheese, and greens, and an extensive array of pastries and other sweets.
44 Wellesworth Drive, Etobicoke, Ontario, 416-695-7396
220 North Service Road West, Oakville, 289-814-2210
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