MILUNKA RADICEVIC
FAMILY TIES
EvEry day but Monday, decades of tradition come to life inside Bay View Serbian restaurant Three Brothers. In the kitchen that has changed little since the restaurant’s Eisenhower-era opening, Milunka Radicevic begins the prep work for an evening of Serbian salad, soft homemade rye bread served with a creamy goat’s milk spread called kaymak, and slow-roasted lamb. Her mother, 75-year-old Patricia, still proudly holds the title of head chef. Milunka and her siblings joined the business once they were able to see over the kitchen table. Her parents taught them “to be useful at a young age,” she says of her industrious parents and paternal grandparents, who set the example for two generations.
While the eldest daughters pursue careers in Chicago, Milunka and brother Branko Jr. have stayed close to Three Brothers. On a busy night, it’s not unusual for Milunka to serve a course or clear a table, along with sharing the cooking duties (she relishes making the rich, savory burek pastry, calling it the culmination of “yin-yang extremes in texture”) and overseeing the waitstaff. Days and nights are a family balancing act of shopping, managing, training staff, paying the bills, cleaning and so on. On Monday, when Three Brothers is closed, they cook and eat together as family and friends. But “when the open sign is on, we’re no longer related; we’re a business,” says Milunka, whose title is simply “daughter.” This generation hasn’t forgotten what previous ones endured.
The restaurant-founding Radicevics, Yugoslavian emigrés, endured quite a lot. Milunka’s grandfather forged a harrowing path from a Polish concentration camp during World War II to working-class Bay View freedom, where he molded a former Schlitz tavern into the soulful seat of long, hearty meals
on Formica tables. Grandmother Radicevic shaped the menu, suffused with slow-cooked Balkan specialties.
Branko, who died in late 2014, didn’t let his time in a Yugoslavian jail fracture his dreams of American success. He left a Bank of America job in California when his father fell ill and needed him to come home and take over Three Brothers.
Patricia learned to cook and speak Serbian. Branko, among other things, shopped, cleaned, butchered whole animals and kept the books. Their world revolved around that dining room with an old Schlitz globe over the bar. When the lights went out each night and the door was locked, they had only to walk upstairs to go home. Milunka studied at UW-Milwaukee and traveled often, but as her father aged, she “learned the value of time” and felt the pull of family. Branko’s body had begun to wear down but not his spirit, buoyed in 2002 when they won the James Beard Foundation America’s Classics Award. “It was sweet for so many reasons,” says Milunka. “My mother has been cooking for 45 years. [Diners] give us an incredible openness. We give you who we are.”
For so many reasons Three Brothers is unlike any other restaurant. Seated at a little table close to the kitchen (from which the active sounds of cooking emerge), Branko would sit and benignly survey the room. Sanford Restaurant founder-cum-cooking school co-owner Sandy D’Amato and his wife Angie “spent many an evening with Branko and Pat, sharing slivovitz and solving all the problems of the restaurant world.” They came as much for the “graciousness and generosity” of the owners, as much as for the food, D’Amato says. Milunka learned to cook her grandmother’s food, but aside from making the magnificent Branko’s torte for special occasions, she leaves the last course to her mother. Patricia is “phenomenal with desserts. I don’t have tremendous patience!” she says. Cutting onions – for so many dishes – is her bane. But working alongside her siblings, mother and sometimes extended family is a “continual blossoming of what you wish a family would be. There has never been a separation of family and business.” It’s unlikely there ever will be.