The Sausages At Kiko S In Lincoln Square Look Like Thumbs But They Taste A Lot Better

• Mike Sula
• cevapcici and lepinya, Kiko’s

The quiet ubiquity of cevapcici on the north side is something I’ve been meaning to address for years. These stubby, unencased ground-meat sausages are nearly as common as hamburgers in some neighborhoods, but are generally only served in the Balkan restaurants that began to open in the early to mid-90s in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia—restaurants frequented almost exclusively by folks who came from there. It’s too bad cevapcici aren’t embraced more broadly, though the itinerant Cevapcici Chicago has a pretty high profile on the festival circuit. The sausages take a variety of forms, from the chubby lamb-and-beef zeppelins at Brisku’s Bistro (where they’re known by their Albanian name qebapa) to the slender Serbian extrusions at Beograd Meat Market to the bite-size thumburgers at Kiko’s in Lincoln Square.

• Mike Sula
• Kiko’s Market & Restaurant