“The idea came from the way we eat in the Balkans,” explains Ivan Iricanin, owner of the newly opened Ambar, a Balkan spot in River North (700 N. Clark St.). “Food is always on the table; as soon as you come, there are appetizers, cheese, cold cuts, and the table is never empty. If the table is empty, the host is doing something wrong and people are not happy!” That’s how Iricanin wants guests to feel at Ambar, which offers an all-you-care-to-eat approach and a robust menu.

First, a primer for the unfamiliar, which included me until recently — what exactly is Balkan food? Well, as Iricanin explains, the Balkans run from Slovenia all the way through Macedonia, and if you know anything about world history, you know that a lot of various invaders have tramped through the empires in that part of the world. That mélange of influences has created a cuisine with elements of Turkish, Greek, Mediterranean, and other flavors, and rich, slow-cooked flavors are the unifying element. “We have these deep-flavored dishes,” Iricanin says. “If you drive from Serbia to Croatia, you see a lot of restaurants with a whole lamb or whole pig slowly turning and roasting next to the road.”

At Ambar, these inspirations are all over the menu — lamb shoulder with onions and potatoes and pork shoulder with cabbage come from the oven, while cevapi made with ground beef or chunks of housemade smoked pork sausage come from the grill. A wood-fired oven turns out traditional savory cheese pies, meat pies with ground beef and minced leeks, and a variety of flatbreads derived from Macedonian pastrmajlija.

When Iricanin came to the U.S. in 2005, he didn’t speak English and found that the fastest way to make a living was in restaurants. He started as a busboy at a restaurant in Richard Sandoval’s restaurant group, and worked his way up to the national director of operations for the group. But even after all that restaurant experience, he couldn’t find a good place to eat his home cuisine in his home city (Washington, D.C.) and made it his mission to open the first Balkan restaurant there. This is Ambar’s fourth location, and the first outside of the D.C. area. Iricanin chose Chicago because it has the largest Balkan population in the U.S. “After our first week of being open, we are being really well received by the Balkan community,” he explains. “You can see by last name — 50 percent of the reservations are Balkan.”

The approach to service at Ambar is as interesting as the cuisine. Unusually for a new restaurant in Chicago, Ambar is taking something akin to an all-you-can-eat approach, though gorging yourself isn’t the goal. For $55 a person, you can order unlimited items off the menu for two hours. Each dish is sized for tasting, so you can try as many things as possible. You can start with kajmak (Balkan clotted cream), veal soup, and flatbread, then move onto grilled shrimp, roasted baby carrots, and one of the most popular dishes, crispy corn ribs. “You can order whatever you like and experiment; if you don’t like it, just keep going,” he says. As you might imagine, designing an unlimited menu that won’t break the restaurant’s bank account took a lot of learning and tweaking, but after 12 years, they have it down pretty well.

The food isn’t the only draw at Ambar; it also has what must be the best rakia list in Chicago. Rakia is Balkan fruit brandy, and was traditionally made at home from whatever fruit was available. Ambar has focused on a few small distilleries and is bringing in the entire selection from those distilleries, so diners can do comparative tastings of different types of rakia. There’s also a heavily Balkan wine list, with special prices if you do the unlimited tasting (house wines made just for Ambar are $7 a glass and cocktails are $8 to $9).

Iricanin is confident that Chicago will embrace Ambar. “We think we are bringing something new — it’s hard to be another steakhouse in Chicago or another Mexican restaurant,” he laughs. “This is a style of food that is rare in the United States.”