About

Hey everyone,

My name is Damir and this is my beautiful wife Martine, and our little girl Olivia, and our husky Mishu. We spend a lot of time in the kitchen, cooking, eating and sharing all kinds of meals. During college, I bartended in a restaurant and eventually was one of the managers, but my biggest takeaway from the industry was cultivating a passion for cooking. Restaurant chefs, in my experience, love to teach and pass knowledge, so during my four years of working in the industry, I tried to absorb as much as possible.

Several years later, I lived in California with Martine while I was finishing graduate school; we started frequenting the vibrant California farmers markets, using fresh, local, and seasonal ingredients to cook our everyday meals and weekly meal prep.
We’ve maintained that tradition of eating seasonally and locally as much as possible, even as we’ve now been back living in Chicago for over six years. The Evanston Farmers Market is our local staple, and during the summer, we grow vegetables, fruits and herbs in our raised garden beds in the backyard.

My goal in creating Damir’s Kitchen (DK) is to share our love of cooking beautiful seasonal ingredients and probably tons of steak. I was born in Sarajevo, Bosnia, so I grew up with Balkan food. But a big influence on me has been Italian cuisine, the simplicity and seasonality of the cuisine have always resonated with me. So, in DK, you’ll see my take on traditional Balkan dishes and cuisines from all around the Mediterranean and the world. You’ll see what we cook on the regular at home, and the fancier meals dad cooks on the weekends.
Damir