STORIES FROM THE CLUBPriče iz Kluba

“If the walls could talk, they would be true biographers of the Club and its guests.”

Priče koje su ostajale posle večere Večeri koje se pamte

It is said that at the Writers’ Club, when the doors closed and the guests left, the kitchen staff would spend a long time recounting what the evening had brought—conversations, encounters, witticisms, and small dramas that unfolded at the tables.

If the walls could speak, they would be chroniclers of the city and its people.

Only a portion of these stories lives on today—passed down by staff and regular guests, often in passing, without any intention of becoming legend. That was precisely their strength: in their naturalness, immediacy, and the sense that something more than an ordinary dinner was always happening at the Club.
For many writers, journalists, artists, and their companions, the Club was a place where meetings extended, conversations deepened, and evenings were remembered. Without music to interrupt words, without the need for posturing—just a table, a glass, a plate, and people.

Some of these stories have remained part of the Club’s oral memory.

Not as a myth to be repeated, but as a reminder of the spirit of a space where conversation always took precedence.

Silent Witnesses of Time

Besides the people who defined the Club, one of its symbols was the old Smederevo wine barrel. After several decades of service in the kitchen, it was moved to the courtyard, where it stands today at the entrance—not as an exhibit of nostalgia, but as a quiet reminder of the continuity of work, craft, and time spent at the table.

People Who Shaped the Spirit of the Club

Since its founding, the Writers’ Club has been a gathering place for people from the world of art and culture. Many writers, journalists, and artists began their evenings here and stayed late into the night, in a space where conversation, debate, and silence held equal value.
The Club was often called the “club of wise words”—not because of titles or accolades, but because of the atmosphere in which ideas circulated freely and generations naturally succeeded one another. The young came to listen, the older to speak, and time did its work.
Out of respect for the people who left their mark on this space, the Club still maintains tables dedicated to those who spent the most time at them—not as monuments, but as quiet remembrance of evenings, conversations, and presences that shaped the spirit of the place.

As Momo Kapor wrote, the Writers’ Club was a space where generations imperceptibly succeeded one another—so that those who arrive become part of the same story, often without noticing when the turn passed to them.

“Here you were easily cured of success and your own greatness.”

– Momo Kapor
For many foreign guests, one evening at the Club was enough to understand the city—not through landmarks, but through a table, a glass, and conversation. In that sense, the Club was never just a restaurant, but a meeting place that lived through the people who kept returning to it.

The Beginning—When the Club Fed Writers

Founded in 1946, the Writers’ Club was a social dining restaurant for writers, where Belgrade’s intellectual elite dined at subsidized prices. The tradition of preparing traditional dishes has always been present.

Tables That Remember

They are part of our identity. Artists who still live in their club. Since its inception, the Writers’ Club has been a gathering place for the most prominent people from the world of art. A large number of writers began their evenings here and spent entire nights in the three basement rooms of this iconic bohemian venue. Here, in the “club of wise words,” as many rightly called it, many “great pens” who left a deep mark on Serbian and world literature found inspiration. Out of respect for these people, their works, the time and emotions they associated with this place, the Writers’ Club decided to dedicate to each of them the table at which they spent the most time. In honor of them, their works, time, and emotions, begin reading the following lines.

Momo Kapor on Danilo Kiš

The first time I felt old with him was at the Writers’ Club on Francuska 7. It was a year before his death. He had returned from Strasbourg, where he had been a lecturer, and we sat in “Srpska Kafana” drinking until midnight, when the hall manager announced a break. We went to the Writers’ Club, which was still open and which Kiš rarely visited in recent years, and the owner Ivo Kusilić found us the only available table in the dining room. We sat down, ordered drinks, and looked around. We no longer knew anyone here. Around us sat an entirely new, young crowd. Kiš called Ivo over and asked him where all the old people from the time when we used to come here were. They were Milan Bogdanović, Bartoš, Velibor Ligorić, Eli Finci, Dušan Baranin, and many others.

“Where are they now?” he asked.

“Well, now it’s the two of you,” said Ivo Kusilić.

And we looked at each other. We borrowed a receipt pad and a pen from Ivo and began calculating how old these old-timers, the classics of the sixties, could have been when we started coming to the club. It turned out they were our age or even younger than us, yet they seemed so old to us.

Momo Kapor on the Writers’ Club

In the West, writers live in solitude, each in their own world, mostly not even knowing each other personally. Unlike them, at the bar of the Writers’ Club in Belgrade, it is possible to see the highest concentration of writers per square meter in Europe. Into the middle room, beside the bar, hungry, thin, and confused young poets from the provinces enter for the first time, only to emerge two or three decades later from the best-lit left dining room as tired, heavy laureates—writers from textbooks. When my friends from around the world mention the Belgrade Writers’ Club, I always notice a certain gastronomic nostalgia trembling in their voices, interwoven with a night owl’s longing for places where one can chat and argue until morning. Indeed, the food at the club is exceptionally good, probably the best in the country. It is, incidentally, the only menu I know by heart, like a love poem addressed not to the heart but to the stomach—from the first cold appetizer to Mrs. Buda’s signature. At the same time, it is the best guide to what is called Serbian cuisine.
It is enough for a foreigner to spend one evening in the basement of the Writers’ Club on Francuska 7 to complete a one-night crash course in understanding Belgrade and the Serbian people’s mentality through food, drink, and conversation.

Bogdan Tirnanić on the Writers’ Club

A decade or two ago, the Writers’ Club was for most Belgraders a somewhat mystical place, more myth than tavern. It had the status of belonging to a secret society, where membership required much more than money and overnight success. On June 9, 1979 , on a Saturday, an atomic bomb fell on Belgrade’s café life. The Writers’ Club was closed, ceasing to exist as a famous place to such an extent that even Momo Kapor mentioned it in his novels and chronicles.
Thus fell one of the last bastions of local café culture—a place whose solitary example inspired true pilgrimages of all kinds of night owls. Politicians and journalists, surgeons and water polo players, American and other ambassadors, actors and models, people you had never seen before and adversaries you would encounter several more times during the night, and finally writers—all of them were loyal clientele of the Writers’ Club.
When such a special café disappears, even temporarily, its closure fundamentally changes the nature of our everyday life, which at the café level is so impoverished that it becomes a real cultural problem.
You may still manage to dine in Belgrade without immediate danger to your life, but never again will you share your wobbly table with corresponding academicians and committee secretaries, addressing each other by nicknames until a morning argument about the composition of the national football team. The Writers’ Club was an immediate school of democracy. In that café, everyone was shortchanged on the bill, without distinction. Here you were easily cured of success and your own greatness. The only success recognized in the basement premises of Francuska 7 was priority in line for
a table, while a spot at the bar held special social prestige. “Did you get stuck at the Writers’ Club again last night?” was the first morning sentence in many marital dialogues, over a plate of cream cake that Ivo slipped into your hand “for the lady.”