“This store means a lot for us,’’ says Hafiz Kabashi of Lynn, a native of Kosovo. He was in Elma recently buying Vinobran and Konzervans, a pair of preservative powders used for pickling vegetables, a south Slavic practice. The shop, he says, “has everything from our tradition.’’
Custovic, 41, comes from Dubrovnik, Croatia, on the Adriatic Sea coast. His wife, Elma, 36, is from Srebrenica, where her parents owned a small grocery named for her, in what is now Bosnia and Herzegovina. The store closed soon after the Bosnian War began in 1992, and she and her parents went to Berlin as refugees. That’s where she met Edin, in 1996. Four years later, they came to Chelsea, and Custovic worked in construction while Elma stayed home to care for two children, now 19 and 11. They saved enough money to open Elma on New Year’s Day in 2005.
The store is plain and clean, the shelves full of products that captivate foodies and Slavophiles alike. When he and his wife were growing up, says Custovic, “We fed ourselves with these things. These are things from our land, so we know what does well.’’
The country most represented is Bosnia, whose products include a famed mineral water from the central Bosnian village of Kiseljak; jufka, a thin dough; tarhana, a grain from Sarajevo used in soups; vanilla wafers from the south Bosnian village of Capljina; and diverse teas from the country’s revered mountains. For the Islamic holiday of Eid Al-Adha today, celebrated by Bosnia’s Muslims, Custovic was expecting shipments of baklava, tulumba, and other syrupy sweets.
From Croatia and Slovenia are ajvar, a red-pepper and eggplant spread, sardine and mackerel tins, soup mixes, diverse chocolates and cookies, jams made with figs, plums, and rose hips, and Vegeta. A condiment invented in 1959 by a Bosnian Croat food scientist, Vegeta is a mixture of dried carrot, celery, onion, and parsnip, and is exported to more than 40 countries. Chocolates come from Germany, Italy, and Poland, and sausages from Hungary and Serbia.
But the main draws are two staples: meat and coffee.
