The “Hearthstone” tavern in Bjelosavljevići near Sokolac was the first ethno-style facility in this municipality and has been at the very top of this type of tourist offer in the Sarajevo-Romanija region for 15 years.
The owner of “Hearthstone” Maja Ećimović points out that the most frequent visitors to the tavern are passers-by, and more and more often the guests who announce their arrival and wish to stay in this restaurant.
She states that due to the expansion of the offer and to the satisfaction of the guests, they built a wooden house with 18 beds near the tavern, a dairy cottage and several supporting ethno-style facilities needed by a large farm household.
“We also decided to build a facility to accommodate guests who wished to attend the preparation of our homemade brandy, socialize with “a cheerful machine “, to take breaks from the city bustle, to relieve themselves from stress by staying in clean air and unspoiled nature “, ” emphasizes Ećimović.
She says her family went into this business with several workers, calling it a shop by the home gathering place for family and friends, around the warm center of the hearth, a symbol of family happiness under which seven employees still survive today.
Ećimović is proud to point out that for the guests of the “Hearthstone” tavern, this family produces five types of homemade brandy in the old fashioned way, makes their own red and white wine and uses vegetables grown organically on their property without chemistry.
“From the cornflour, we grind in our mill, we prepare zucchini, kačamak (a kind of maize porridge made in the Balkans) and homemade flour for which we use smoked cream from Romanija, the way our grandmothers did, ” the owner of this tavern told.
She, for one time, used to produce Romanija smoked cream in a dairy cottage built next to the tavern, and now they are preparing smoked fat cheese for their guests and “community” – a mixture of fresh cheese and young cream.
Ećimović points out that her sons, Đorđe and Miloš, also came into this business, learning and helping their parents from a young age in all their businesses in expanding the hospitality industry.
Today, they take care of preparing homemade co-meat products and making sausages in the family dryer.
The “Hearthstone” tavern, he says, serves veal under a honeycomb, pie, pepper, homemade bread, dishes of widely known rum potatoes and young lamb prepared in the traditional way, specific only for this region.
Ećimović claims that the tavern serves homemade juices, which she produces every week, mainly from forest fruits purchased from local collectors from the Romania area.
HUGE POTENTIAL OF GLASINC AND ROMANIJA
She believes that there is a huge potential of Glasinac and Romanija in this type of tourism and that all that nature has given to this area can be used to attract tourists from all over.
“All we need to do is connect people from our area that is entirely ethno, so that they can rely on each other and cooperate in providing a diverse tourist offer, and enrich the facilities attractive to guests,” recommends the owner of this restaurant.
According to her, at least once a year, Sokolac could host various sporting events such as the workers’ games of larger companies, since it has all the necessary terrain, which would benefit the entire local community.
The “Hearthstone” tavern started operating in 2005 and is located along the Sarajevo-Višegrad highway, five kilometers from Sokolac.
Source: Glas Srpske