Burek in North Macedonia: Fillings, How to Order, Prices

Burek in North Macedonia is a round, layered filo pie baked in a big tray and sold by the portion, and the standard breakfast is a portion with a cup of sour drinking yoghurt. Name the filling and you’re done: so sirenje (cheese), so meso (minced meat), so spanak (spinach). On its menu of 31 October 2026, City Burek in Tetovo listed a cheese burek at 100 denars (about €1.60) and a meat one at 120 denars (about €1.95).

In Bosnia only the meat pie is called burek; here the cheese, spinach and potato pies are burek too, which is why you order by the filling. And Skopje’s bakeries sell a bun that’s stuffed with nothing but burek pastry.

Round pie, not a spiral: what the word covers

Wikipedia’s entry on börek puts North Macedonia with Serbia, Albania, Kosovo, Croatia and Montenegro: burek there means layers of dough alternating with filling in a circular baking pan, closed with a last sheet of dough. Bosnia is the exception it describes. A Bosnian burek is meat-filled and rolled into a spiral; the same spiral with cottage cheese is sirnica, with spinach and cheese zeljanica, with potato krompiruša, and the family is called pita. In a Macedonian bakery the filling is just an adjective, which is why City Burek’s menu lists “burek” with cheese, spinach, potato, cabbage or meat.

Ask for a quarter, then add the yoghurt

Skopje’s burek shops (burekdžilnici) and bakeries (pekara, or furna, the word Silbo’s website uses in its heading) sell the round pie whole, by the half or by the quarter, and the everyday unit is a četvrt, a quarter: Telma’s headline treats a quarter plus a small yoghurt cup as one breakfast. When the broadcaster reported a price rise on 10 July 2024, several shops in the capital added 10 denars per quarter, or 40 per whole pie, and that headline sum came to 115 denars. The quarter isn’t weighed, and in June 2026 the business site Denar.mk complained that nobody knows what one weighs. So “a quarter with cheese and a yoghurt” is the whole order.

The yoghurt isn’t decoration. National Geographic advises washing burek down with a sour, fermented yoghurt drink to cut through the fat, and says it comes wrapped in grease-soaked paper from the shop. At City Burek a jogurt and an ayran both cost 30 denars (about €0.50); in July 2024 Telma put a small cup at 25.

The bun that holds only pastry

Gastro Obscura describes simit-pogača, a Skopje breakfast sandwich. Bakers slice open a bun and stuff it with burek, but in this one there is no meat, no cheese and no sauce: the filling is the plain, flaky crust. Like any burek, it goes down with a drinking yoghurt. The same entry points to Bakery Koki on Dame Gruev street as a place to try it, and notes that Koki also sells burek, with a tip for the variety with feta in the crust.

It’s the mildest way into the burek family if you aren’t sure about fillings, and it shares a logic with the prazan version in the table above: the pastry is the point, the filling is optional.

What a portion costs

Here are the reference points: two delivery menus we read on 31 October 2026, one in Skopje and one in Tetovo, and a Skopje press figure from 2024.

In Skopje, Pekara Vatasha on Dimitar Turimandzhoski street listed a quarter of cheese or meat burek at 100 denars (about €1.60) on its Wolt menu and the whole pie at 400 (about €6.50); with its 30-denar cup of yoghurt, the quarter-and-yoghurt breakfast came to 130 denars (about €2.10, $2.35 or £1.75).

The fuller menu is City Burek’s, on Ilindenska street in Tetovo, which we read on Wolt the same day. Both are delivery menus and neither states a portion weight, so expect the counter price to be close rather than identical.

Conversions use exchange rates of 30 October 2026: 61.5 denars to the euro, with the dollar and pound at the ECB’s reference rates.

The older figure is Skopje’s too: in July 2024 Telma put burek “close to 100 denars” depending on the filling and a small yoghurt cup at 25, so a full breakfast came to 115 or 125 denars, and a large bakery chain had moved from 80 to 90 that morning. All of these sit inside the “a euro or two” that our cost index gives for a bakery burek.

Where to buy it: early, late and in the bazaar

In Skopje the obvious ground is the Old Bazaar, where bakeries sit between the grills; our Skopje restaurant guide maps the bazaar and Debar Maalo, and the Old Bazaar guide covers the monuments between them.

Timing matters more than the address. Spotted by Locals’ Skopje contributor Boban Talevski describes a custom of heading for one of the few open bakeries at around 04:00 to 05:00, after the clubs, for fresh pastry and yoghurt, and names La Delicious, near the centre and the park, for burek, pizza banichka and pastries. The entry doesn’t give hours, so check before you plan a morning around it. Bakery Koki on Dame Gruev street, from the simit-pogača entry above, is the other named address.

Outside the capital, Tetovo’s City Burek is open 09:00 to 18:00 on weekdays and 09:00 to 16:00 on weekends according to its Wolt listing; our Tetovo guide puts it in the context of the town’s bazaar and its Albanian-influenced food. For Ohrid we have no dated price, but you can learn the dough instead: the village cooking class in Leskoets near Ohrid makes burek from scratch, and its length, group size and what’s included are in our food tours and cooking classes guide. If you’d rather have a guide choose what you eat, the four-hour Skopje food tour in the box above covers markets and local dishes, with breakfast and lunch included.

If you’re meat-free, and what not to pack

Four of the five City Burek fillings are meat-free. The menu names only the main filling, not the fat in the pastry, so vegetarians and vegans alike should ask before paying; eating vegan and vegetarian in North Macedonia covers what else to ask for.

Leftover burek is best finished before the airport. GOV.UK’s list for travellers from outside the EU rules out meat and meat products and milk-based products on the way into Great Britain, and its overview page lets bread in but not sandwiches filled with meat or dairy, so a cheese or meat pie is a snack for the departure hall, not the cabin bag. The EU has a matching rule for meat and dairy coming from non-EU countries, which Your Europe last checked on 21 October 2026. Jars and other food you can carry are covered in the ajvar guide, and what to eat in North Macedonia sets burek among the other dishes.

Read also

• The table around it: Macedonian food
• The relish on the side: ajvar
• Bazaar eating: Skopje Old Bazaar
• Costs: North Macedonia cost index