Here’s a great place to eat — The Kitchen in the Blloku district. I had to go to the bank (Union Bank) and the all purpose health/beauty store (Rossman & Lala) so why not stop for lunch?
Here’s the exterior at night. Full restaurant, bar, and all.
At lunchtime, the place was a bit busy. That’s good! I call this “getting the numbers” from my restaurant-owning days. I mean, it’s hard to trust a restaurant that’s empty at lunchtime.
Verdict: The tapas are super. I had three kinds, plus a beer and a raki.
Here are the names and the prices:
Left to right: I ordered pinchos cheese e spianata (spicy salami from Calibria, Italy), tomato cheese pinchos, and pinchos de pollo fajita. They were muy bueno, as we say in California.
The end of the meal looks like this. Those sticks are the pinchos (literally “thorns” or “spikes”).
There are other items…
Look at the “regular” food. You can order Albanian “tapas,” meat tapas, seafood tapas, and… the Albanian version of tacos. One nice thing is that you can get Prosecco by the glass, which isn’t all that common.
And now, for the bill…
The bill is mostly correct. The tomato and cheese pinchos are 20 leke higher than the menu price. The raki at 400 leke is a big ripoff, since 100 leke per shot is common all over town. Aw… no problem.
The total bill of 1,440 leke ($17.47) for a wonderful lunch is great! I couldn’t do that at Applebee’s in Lodi.
And that’s the tapas news. I welcome your questions and comments. Barry