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What makes Adelaide’s newest cafe, Little Pita Co, special isn’t just the handmade pastries coming out of its tiny Wyatt Street kitchen.
It’s the generations of family history being folded into every golden delicacy.
What began as a mother-daughter project for Ines Nasup and her mum Jasminka has now grown into a three-generation family affair, with Ines’ 21-year-old daughter joining them in the kitchen to learn the traditional art of making Bosnian pita.
For Ines, it’s a chance to continue a story that began long before Little Pita Co.
Her mum was just three years old when she was separated from her own mother and spent her childhood in an orphanage. She never had the chance to learn family recipes or watch her own mum cooking in the kitchen.
Instead, when she later wanted to learn how to cook, older Bosnian women in her community opened their kitchens to her.
They taught her how to stretch the pastry, shared their techniques and passed on the knowledge they had learned themselves.
Over the years, Jasminka took pieces of wisdom from each of these women and developed her own way of making pita, a tradition Ines is now carrying forward with her own daughters.
“It’s been really cool having three generations together at one table making pastry,” Ines said.
“To have time to spend with your mum and your daughter at the same time is really special.”
Her eight-year-old daughter has also been involved for years, with Ines sharing videos of the pair making pita together, while her eldest daughter has spent the past few months learning the craft before joining the business.
The food is deeply rooted in Balkan tradition.
Pita is made by stretching pastry incredibly thin before filling it with ingredients such as potato and onion, spinach and cheese, zucchini and cheese, or ricotta and egg.
There’s also burek, the traditional meat-filled pastry, alongside chicken burek, lepinja flatbreads, homemade kajmak and ajvar.
Then there are the sweets, with house-made baklava, kadaif, tulumbe, hurmasice and sweet pita filled with combinations including apple and cinnamon or ricotta and fig.
“We’ll also have weekly specials featuring different traditional Balkan desserts,” Ines said.
For first-timers, Ines has one obvious recommendation, the traditional meat and onion burek.
Little Pita Co has been a labour of love, with the tiny space finally coming together after a few delays.
Now, the three generations are busy cooking side by side ahead of opening day.
For Ines, one of the most exciting parts is being able to introduce more Adelaideans to food that is deeply embedded in everyday life in Bosnia, where burek and ćevapi are staples eaten throughout the day and found almost everywhere.
“It’s almost like how McDonald’s is here, burek is like that,” she said.
With something unique and completely different gracing Wyatt Street, we’re sure there’ll be customers waiting for the doors to swing open on Friday.
Little Pita Co will officially open its doors on August 21 11am – 9pm.
The Little Pita Co.
When: 8am to 3pm weekdays, official opening August 21
Where: Shop 6 & 7/34 Wyatt St, Adelaide
For more, click here.
