The Name
Naissus was a city
before it was a table.
Two thousand years ago the Romans called it Naissus — the settlement on the Nišava, in the south of what is now Serbia. It gave the empire an emperor and the region a crossroads: a place where the road east met the road west, and everyone stopped to eat.
We took the name because it describes the kitchen. This is Serbian cooking, plainly. Charcoal and salt from the villages. Kajmak and pastry from the mountains. Paprika hung to dry, rakija from the orchard. Nothing invented, nothing softened — only cooked properly, and served the way it is at home.
The pita is rolled here each morning. The grill is lit before the doors open. The rest is the room, and the length of the evening.
— Naissus, Port Road
