Playska Opens Today With a Pickled Plethora of Balkan-Inspired Street Food [UPDATED]
CHEF TIM WIECHMANN and HIS SIGNATURE PLJESKAVICA SANDWICH AT PLAYSKA. / PHOTOGRAPH BY WEBB CHAPPELL
Chef Tim Wiechmann, the mastermind behind Cambridge’s T.W. Foods and Somerville’s Bronwyn, debuts his third restaurant today at 11:30. Playska, a Balkan-inspired street food shop and bakery, has a pickled plethora of southeastern European fare on the menu, which will change regularly. Check out the full, opening lineup below.
Expect items like the shop’s namesake sandwich, which tops a bacon pogacha roll with a pork and beef patty and a red paeper ajvar relish, cucumber pickle, and cream cheese rémoulade, plus standard pickled red beets and onions. Cvapi, a Bosnian-style pork sausage, comes with feta, red onion, and yoghurt rémoulade on lepinje bread. Or, try pickled bacon with spicy feta and paprika spread, house pickles, toasted walnuts, and butter lettuce, on challah.
Vegetarians, fear not: Wiechmann’s house-made breads are also a vehicle for meatless mounds. A veg playska subs the sausage-burger hybrid with a beet, lentil, and walnut patty, and uses lepinje, a Serbian flatbread. There’s also a Bulgarian shopska salad sandwich, with tomato, pickled peppers, cucumber, and feta; and a foraged mushroom option with wild hens-of-the-wood, a spread made of avocado and red cardamom, and aged Gouda.
Not feeling a sandwich? Hand-stretched dough wraps both meat and vegetarian hand-pies; burek is filled with pork, beef, feta, and red pepper ajvar, and banista is a spiral pie with kale, feta, and onion.
The 16-seat café in Inman Square opens the doors at 11:30 a.m., and will continue serving sandwiches, pies, house-made pickles and condiments—and a cocoa, buttermilk, and beet juice Balkan sheet cake for good measure—until 8 p.m., or until the food’s gone, whichever comes first. No phone orders will be taken until November 17. Playska will be open Tuesday-Sunday and plans to launch breakfast service soon.
243 Hampshire St., Inman Square, Cambridge; 617-864-0170 or playska.com.
