Many people in Warrnambool have no idea where Lithuania is, let alone what its food is like.

But Renata and Mark Keane are hoping to change that with the opening of Renata’s Lithuanian Café in Henna Street.

The couple realised that Lithuanian food was a foreign concept to many locals and first planned to call it Renata’s Russian Café to give people a general idea of the cuisine.

However, Russia’s meddling in the Ukraine last year persuaded them to ditch that idea.

Mr Keane, of Koroit, developed a taste for Lithuanian food after travelling to the northern European country in 2005 when he sponsored an Australian junior wrestling team. On that trip he met Renata and they married in 2007.

In the meantime, he become a keen fan of the country’s cuisine, particularly its shashliks, skewers of chunks of marinated beef or pork, cooked over coals. His wife Renata loves cooking for others and jumped at the idea of sharing her passion for food in a café.

The Keanes are still testing the market for Lithuanian cuisine and the dishes share the café’s menu with Australian staple fast foods such as meat pies and hamburgers.

“We want to do Lithuanian food and Aussie food,” Mr Keane said.

Apart from shashliks, other Lithuanian dishes to make appearances on the menu are goulash, dumplings, Russian savoury pancakes and beef stroganoff.

“Every day there will be a Lithuanian dish,” Mr Keane said.

The dishes have received a good reception so far and they plan to also sell European-style speciality breads such as Bavarian dark rye.

The couple recognise that Lithuania is not on many people’s radar and have placed a book in the café about the small nation that has three million people and has Latvia, Belarus and Poland among its neighbours.