Ukus

The dining room is tiny, clean, and simple, but nearly always full, the glass door perpetually swinging open with several more eager locals waiting at the counter for take-home orders.

Great customer service and even better food. This is a must if you are in Astoria. It was my first time trying Bosnian food and I know I’ll be back many times. I loved the food, I don’t even know how I ate all of my food when I wasn’t hungry. The meat was flavorful and fresh, the bread was warm and delicious, the drinks were very different to the usual coke and orange juices, but were good. Five stars and I will recommend this place to my friends.

I’ve been coming and eating at this restaurant since I was practically a baby. I’m almost 30 now. This is the best spot in my opinion for Albanian food on this side of nyc. Especially in Queens. Their spinach pite (burek) is my absolute favorite. They always kill it with qebapa and pasul as well! It’s my favorite because it’s the best! Plus the service and the workers are so sweet. I adore them! It’s a small place but a great place!

It's a true, but sad, fact that restaurants that don't take credit cards "get away with it" because they can, for example: 1. The owners are totally cheating on their taxes. 2. Word of mouth has made the place trendy. 3. The food is SO good that people will flock to the restaurant no matter what. Ukus does not take credit cards because of #3 (I hope they don't cheat on their taxes!) You'll find many 1 and 2 star reviews for Ukus. Why? It's the ol' switcharoo: an army of retarded cheapskates and thin-skinned cry-babies who give ratings, not based on the food, but because... * Seamless or groupon dispute (the retards) * They feel that the food is too expensive (the cheapskates) * They feel slighted by the service (the cry-babies) That said, let's get down to business. The food here is phenomenal. This is a hidden NYC gem. Yelp's lists the cuisine as "modern European", but a more accurate description would be Yugoslavian or Albanian. Chicken Soup: B- A crying shame because the soup looks fantastic! It's a very interesting and "busy" chicken soup: there's a ton of chicken, parsley, noodles, and carrots. However, the soup lacks any kind of flavor. For all the chicken and parsely in it, you'd think it'd be a "chickeny" soup or that there'd be a strong flavor of parsley. Wrong. Sadly, the soup is actually quite tasteless. Hard to believe, but it really doesn't taste like chicken. Ćevapi: A This is a grilled dish of minced beef spiced with parsely and other spices. It's a skinless sausage, traditional to Albania and what used to be Yugoslavia. These sausages are seriously savory. Beautifully crafted, beautifully cooked. They are perfection. It comes with a rather interesting side of what tastes like cream cheese, and bread. I loved this dish, and the only reason why I'm giving it an A instead of A+ is because the bread was too doughy and too thick for such small sausages. It overpowers the sausage with starch. They should also serve the bread warm, which would've been a slice of heaven on Earth. Still, if you've already had the burek, this is a dish you should definitely sample! Burek: A+ It's a meat pie that consists of flaky, crispy, airy phyllo dough outside with crumbled beef on the inside. The phyllo dough was the perfect combination of ultra-crispy on the outside and chewy/savory on the inside. The pie itself is 9" in diameter, and $5 gives you one quarter of that, meaning that the geometry-free cost of said pie is 20/pi dollars per radian. A typical NYC pizza slice (ignoring the $1/slice homeless specials you occasionally see, since they're less appetizing than garbage) is about 10/pi dollars per radian, or roughly half price. However, most people will scarf down 2 pizzas in one sitting. I double dog dare someone to eat the quarter slice of the burek at Ukus. This thing is amazing, and is ostensibly the "signature dish" of Ukus. Stuffed Cabbage: A+ Previous, best stuffed cabbage went to one of my favorite restaurants in NYC: The Polonica. But you know what? Sorry guys, best stuffed cabbage now goes to Ukus. How do they differ? I was never REALLY fond of the sweetness of Polonica's version of the dish. This stuffed cabbage is just as savory (if not more-so) without a hint of sweetness. Furthermore, the dish is light and airy, as opposed to the very dense dish that Polonica serves.

This Balkan/Albanian restaurant indeed is a local gem, the food is amazing. When I ate the soup, it feels like my grandma just made the soup for me. The mini sausages is exceptional, do is the popular burek/meat pie.

Amazing burek! I really enjoyed the spinach and also the feta. Made to order!