Cafe Sarajevo resurfaces on the Main

Turns out when Osman Koulenovitch closed the doors of Cafe Sarajevo for the last time in April of last year, it wasn't for the last time.

Stunned by the outpouring of attention he received when locking up his beloved watering hole, he started talking about reopening somewhere else. It would have to be elsewhere because he had sold the building on Clarke Street that was its home for more than a decade (the pile fetched more than three-quarters of a mil compared to the hundred or so he shelled out in the early nineties). But who really believed the club would be reborn? After all, he had spent years putting up with permit hassles, noise complaints (wouldn't you complain about a young Rufus Wainwright's piano ticklings?), professed plans to sail solo across the Atlantic and other waters to the Bosnian homeland he shucked in the early seventies. Nevertheless, his wishful promises would be rehashed and reheated.

In fact, during a night of Balkan and Gypsy music at the packed hall of the Lion d'Or one cold March night he even made public his pledge that Cafe Sarajevo would rise from the ashes -- all this to a smattering of disbelieving applause from concertgoers who just wish he'd finish talking and get off stage so the music could resume. But props to the sixtiesish Osman.

He did it. Cafe Sarajevo is back. It opened last night at 6548 St. Lawrence Boulevard, albeit in a smokeless space that subs gyproc for fieldstone. As one patroness put it, the old place made you feel like you were somewhere else. But this venue, at least, had some of the old place's charm, which was substantial, and the regular lot of local Bosnians were out in force to hug a little and slap backs to the sounds of accomplished tunesmiths Soleil Tsigane. Congratulations, Oz.