San Diego Serbian Festival 2016 + the St. George Serbian Orthodox Church

Last year TC and I went to the San Diego Serbian Festival on a whim...

I liked the food so much that well, we had to come back...

Bert was with us this time on this first day of October and we made sure to get there right when they opened at 11 am. We parked up the hill in the neighborhood (nice homes they have there).


This is the church you see on the 805 while passing the Bay Park area.

The cost was $3 and was set up slightly differently than last year. Payment was given at a booth near the church and you entered the festival through their dining hall. There were a few vendors booths outside and inside the dining hall.

The covered dining area was nicely set with flowers, red napkins and postcards advertising their associations upcoming events.

This was taken while I was in line to get the food. A separate line was behind me for crepes and coffee and along the wall was the line for pastries.

Speaking of which, everything here was so good...

Most of the pastries were $10 for 6 pieces. The ones below were actually more, because the ingredients were more expensive (chocolate and hazelnuts).



The menu was the same as last year but the new item was the Pljesavica, the Serbian burger. Prices for the most part, remained the same as well. There was a slight increase for the baked beans and the coleslaw (from $1.50 to $2.00). I saw another former colleague while here. She and her husband live in the area and wanted to check out the festival. It was nice seeing her again.

While I was in line, Bert and TC were getting the crepe and coffee but I called TC over so she could hold a tray since one tray wasn't going to fit all that I was going to order.

You can choose to get plates or take out boxes. We chose the latter so we could bring the leftovers home. Everything was labeled and all of the ladies working the table were so friendly. One lady in particular kept trying to force me to get moussaka but I didn't really want it. It's a textural issue.

Bureks -ground beef, cheese and spinach, cheese



We loved how flaky and buttery these meat pies were.

Now for the side dishes. This was a new dish to try, baked cabbage with sausage, plus the baked beans.


Here's the moussaka that I didn't want to get. I'm sure it was delicious but I already had my mind set on what I wanted for us to share.

The meats:




The informative program plus postcard at the table.



First tray - coleslaw, Serbian burger in a bread with yogurt sauce, baked beans, baked cabbage and sausage and a dolma.  For the second tray, cevapcici (mini sausages), meat borek (round coil) and spinach and cheese (triangular).

The meat was a hand formed patty and was pretty juicy. It tasted so good in the bread pocket, which had a nice spongy texture. It came with chopped onions and the yogurt cream cheese sauce.

Of these sides, I liked the beans the best surprisingly enough. I'm not a beans person but these were seasoned nicely and were not mushy.

Bureks and sausage - the chopped onions were for the burger.  Look at the flaky layers on those bureks!  The sausages were also very delicious.

Serbian crepe and coffee - the crepe had strawberries inside and caramel sauce on top. The coffee brand was Aroma, a Turkish style coffee. Bert had a fun conversation with the folks at this booth while I was getting the main dishes.


The coffee was pretty strong with fine grounds floating loosely. Here's a tip when drinking this type of coffee, don't drink it all the way to the bottom, unless you want to drink the ground.

Now for the pastries - Mini walnut tarts, wafer cookies filled with coconut jam, and a butter cookie sandwiched filled with prune jam (this cookie was called vanilice). One half was for us and the other for Cathy and her mister.

It's time for your closeup now...


The coconut jam tasted just like the Filipino version of coconut jam that I grew up eating.

Before we left, I bought a few more for us to enjoy later, the more expensive cookies. Rollat was the rolled cookie filled with nuts, the horseshoe shape was a wedding cookie and made with hazelnuts and butter. The small square was called bayadere and was a layered dessert made with chocolate and ground nuts. All of these were so very delicious.

The ladies at the pastries booth told me that there would be different varieties throughout the day. I guess the pastry supplies depended on what the different bakers brought. Since I didn't have these last year, I wanted to focus on those.

Church tours were being given every two hours. We didn't really take a church tour but were invited to check out the church by one of the festival workers. The church is quite beautiful inside and it was really neat to know that this is the ONLY church in the United States with a fully mosaiced interior!


The narthex - the room you enter before entering the church itself.

Icons in the stained glass

The ceiling featuring Christ.

My sad camera phones do NOT do this beautiful church justice. The colors of the tiny mosaic tiles were so brilliant and even more so with the copious amounts of gold.

The back wall...

The ceiling again (I flipped the image).

View of balcony area:

The Great Dome:

plus the Four Evangelists

Naves on each side of the church:


Iconostasis (Icon screen or Deacon Doors):



Candelabra (without candles):


View from the front of the church. The man in the robe was Deacon Jack, a very friendly man who spoke to us about the various aspects of the church and the Serbian Orthodox religion. One main thing I learned was that when one walks into the church, every "sense" is fully engaged, from sight (the mosaics),  sound (the music and sining), and smell (incese).


Look at the detail.  It took about seven years for the church's mosaic interior to be complete.



I'm so glad we decided to view the church before we left. The mosaic walls are quite rare in church design and again, this is the ONLY church of this kind in the western hemisphere. Other churches with this type of interior are in Italy, Greece, (the former) Yugoslavia, and Istanbul in Turkey.

Informational pamphlet:



Here's a recent video about the church (with some glimpses of the food as well):


Older article about the Church and how mass/service is conducted:
"St. George Serbian Orthodox Church" SD Reader, April 8, 2009

and a blurb about this year's event (which by the time you read this will be over, but fear not, next year's date is posted at the end):
SD International Club Meet Up

More info:
sdserbianfestival.com

Last year's post:
October 2015

St. George Serbian Orthodox Church
3025 Denver St
San Diego, CA 92117
(619) 2754-4476

www.stgeorgeoinsd.org + their fb page

Set your calendar's for next year's date:
October 14, 2017