Welcome to travels with Todd

I’d scheduled a pair of tours for my free day in Tirana. The first was the walking tour detailed in the previous post. The second was a food tour because learning about local food can be a bit of a shortcut to learning about local culture and that’s especially true when you have a guide such as Ariola who, when it comes to food tours, is not only a lallycodler but a deipnosophist.

We met on the steps of the National Opera and Ballet Theater that on a day that’s not following some sort of show on the square and having a temporary stage dismantled looks like this.

[From Albania Visit]

One fortunate aspect of this tour is that we could stay in the immediate neighborhood and still get a broad sampling of traditional Albanian cuisine that, catering to my dietary inclinations, avoided meat in all but one instance.

And we started down a small side street with nary an easily identifiable tourist in sight nor a restaurant that would likely attract the tourist crowd. For example, after the tour, I discovered that the first place we stopped –

Te Ela Byrektore – had precisely four reviews on Trip Advisor. Our next stop Restorant Tujani had five.

As nearly as I can tell, the Albanian byrek is, in many ways, similar to the bureks I sampled in Sarajevo. What I had the pleasure of eating at Te Ela was a cousin of the byrek common to the Korçë region called lakror. The main differences between lakror and byrek is that the former has a savory filling between two layers of very thin hand-rolled dough giving it a more rustic character while the latter has more layers and is often shaped into rolls, triangles, or squares. I sampled two distinct fillings – lakror me gjizë ( a ricotta-style cottage cheese filling)

[From Agroweb]

and lakror me 2 pe te (onion and tomato filling).

[From Agroweb]

These were quite tasty and I certainly preferred them to dhallë – the drink Aurora chose to accompany them.

In a post tour message in an iteration of what she told me at the time, she described it as “A refreshing yogurt-based drink with a tangy twist.” The drink is a blend of yogurt, water, and salt and I’ll simply say that I’d classify it as an acquired taste – at least for me. Albanians seem to savor it.

You better chow down or it’s gonna get cold

While I call my typical diet primarily plant based, I don’t call myself a vegetarian because I’m not. I eat fish, fowl, and eggs without a second thought. At home, I don’t knowingly eat mammals or marsupials. When traveling, I’m inclined to break this rule if a particular dish is culturally traditional. (See, for example, my consumption of cuy in Peru.) Ariola wanted to take me to a nearby restaurant where one of their specialties is Tavë dheu so I told her I’d try it.

Tavë dheu translates as “Clay-pot casserole.” This slumgullion is often made with beef pieces or veal or lamb liver and I believe the version we had used pieces of veal. It’s cooked slowly (1 – 3 hours) in the clay pot in which it’s served. The other principal ingredients are tomatoes, peppers, onions, and gjizë flavored by numerous herbs and spices. Not only did I think it quite tasty, the accompanying birra Korça was much more to my liking than the dhallë.

[From tavoli.co.uk]

Te Ela had a few tables where we sat and ate our lakror and Tujani is a small restaurant. Our next two stops provided something of an amuse bouche. First we stopped at a local cheese shop where we sampled fresh djathë lope (cow cheese) and fresh djathë e bardhe (goat cheese). From there we entered the Pazari i Ri an open air market or bazaar where Ariola picked a few fruit called xinxife in Albanian that some of you might know as jujube or Chinese dates.

Our next stop was not a small out of the way spot but probably one of the most popular restaurants in Tirana for locals and tourists alike. This would be Odas Garden and, truth be told, I hadn’t started eating until we sat down in the crowded courtyard where I’d be served what amounted to two entrees and dessert. The first was called Imam Bajalldi. A more technical name would be patëllxhan i mbushur or in American English stuffed eggplant with mixed vegetables (stuffed aubergine to my British friends).

It’s almost certain that this dish

[From Arti Gatimit]

has Turkish origins and thus stems from the more than five centuries of Ottoman rule. It’s said that the name Imam Bajalldi means “the Imam fainted” and this connects to Turkish linguistically (imam bayildi) and to the Ottoman folk tales of the name’s origin. The most common story tells of an imam who fainted with pleasure after first tasting the dish (sometimes the tale says it was prepared by his wife and others prepared by a family who had invited him to dine with them).

Like most Mediterranean and Middle Eastern cuisines Albania has another stuffed dish that uses grape leaves when they are in season. Many of you might be familiar with dolmas. In the fall, Albanians will switch from grape leaves to cabbage leaves – sometimes using pickled cabbage leaves (sarma) or, in other iterations, using fresh cabbage. The second dish at Odas Garden used fresh cabbage. It’s called lakër e mbushur and it looks like this.

[From YouTube Gatimet e Shqiperise]

Since both of these dishes can (but don’t necessarily) contain meat, I don’t know if the restaurant offers a vegetarian option or if Ariola made a special request. Either way, the vegetable stuffings were stuffing me and we weren’t quite finished at Odas because no meal is complete until the sweet tooth is served.

In this instance, the dessert would be the somewhat ironically named shëndetlie.

[From My Albanian Food]

The cake batter contains butter, sugar, honey, eggs, flour, and baking soda and is every bit as dense as it looks. But it’s not done yet. You have to add walnuts before pressing it into your baking dish. Once it’s baked, you effectively drown it in a hot simple syrup that the cooling cake absorbs. So why did I call the name somewhat ironic? It derives from the Albanian word shëndetin which means health. I can think of no one in the west who would claim this cake to be healthy.

We were nearing the end of our tour but Ariola had a surprise or two remaining which meant I had to fight the descending feeling of zwodder and soldier on to our next stop – the close by Reka Pasticeri. Fortunately, she wasn’t taking me there to indulge in any of the shop’s very tempting pastries. Rather, it was a place to sample bozë.

Bozë is a fermented drink (so maybe I was getting some probiotics) made from corn. It’s simultaneously acidic and sweet. She told me it’s not as popular as it once was but called it, “full of nostalgia for Albanians.”

[From Pinterest]

Our final stop was at Komiteti – Kafe Muzeum – an apt description of this museum in a coffee shop. We walked around a bit looking at some of the objects all of which appeared to be from the communist era or earlier.

We sat down to a cup of espresso for her and blueberry tea (the best I could do under the circumstances) for me. I count myself fortunate because we had quite a long, relaxed, and wide ranging conversation that went far beyond food. It provided a delectable end to the day.

If you’re planning a visit to Tirana and would like a food tour, Ariola’s tour has my full stomached recommendation.

Back at the Livia

I had just a bit of time to stop in my room and splash some water on my face and hands before I went downstairs to meet most of the group with whom I’d spend the coming week. There was one other American. Everyone else had ties to the UK including Scotland, Australia, and Aotearoa New Zealand. We also met our guide, E. who told us he had a restaurant to recommend if we wanted to have a group dinner. We walked to Oda’s Garden!

Tomorrow we set off for the Shala (pronounced Shah-lah) River.