"CROATIA Excerpt from Eat the World Los Angeles: A Google search for LuMar will not have any hits with the meaning of this small restaurant in Old Town Monrovia. For that information, you will have to talk to the cafe 's owner, Dragica Grabovac, who named it after her two children Lucia and Mario. They were teenagers when the restaurant opened at the beginning of 2012. As the restaurant starts its ninth year of business, they are well into adulthood and Cafe LuMar has the same feeling of a neighborhood rock. ° You could say most of the menu is not Croatian, but that is to lack an understanding of the food in Croatia, which gets its inspirations from all directions in Europe. One of the dishes that has no trouble raising the Croatian flag is sarma, a stuffed cabbage entree that is enjoyed throughout the Balkans and beyond. Here the perfectly prepared leaves are stuffed with a mixture of ground beef, pork, and rice and drowned in a wonderful savory sauce. ° For another filling Balkan specialty try ćevapi. These sausages are skinless as always and heroically juicy in their preparation. Just a touch of char from the grill is added to complement the already full flavors. Use your hands to tear of a piece of the warmed pita, wrap a sausage and dip into the red pepper ajvar. 'You are not Croatian! ' the friendly server exclaimed as most of the raw onions were left after the meal. This apparently was a dead giveaway, as any self-respecting Croatian would have been asking for more."
