Traditional Food with Heart

As we have stated in many other Blogs, watching YouTube before we left for this one-year journey was a standard past-time for our learning. There are so many content creators we could thank for paving the way and giving us confidence for this journey. Whenever we watched a video, we almost always took away at least one new nugget of information. Just like precious stones, some of the nuggets were small and others were large. Some of the precious stones paved the way for easier transportation and others paved the way for fun museums. One of the best precious stones we gathered from several YouTube content creators was a restaurant recommendation in Vlorë, Albania.

Albanians are very giving people. They will give to you, even if it means they don’t have enough for themselves. Food is one of those ways they like to give to show they care about you. Shortly after we arrived in Vlorë, Albania we searched out the restaurant we had seen on YouTube. Tucked back into a residential area and located on the ground floor of an apartment building is Sofra e Lakroit. On the first day we walked to the restaurant, we were greeted at the door and told that they were closed. Then, she explained how the reservation process works. Using Whatsapp the day before our desired dining time, we had to text the restaurant with the time and number in our party. The confirming reply message would include the limited menu choices of the day. We needed to PRE-ordered our dinner so they would know how much of the ingredients to buy. Following her instructions, we ordered grilled vegetables, traditional lakror pie, salce kosi, and baked sausages.

When we arrived for our reservation, we were seated inside the small shop which had three tables inside and two on the patio (seating for 20 people total). In one corner of the restaurant was a large open hearth operated by the elder gentleman (“Grandfather”). Showing interest in the cooking methods, they waved us over to take videos and photos. He rotated the pans, lifted and replaced the lids or foil, and mopped his heated brow. The other chef (“Grandmother”) measured and rolled out the dough and mixed ingredients. She was preparing each ingredient for the next round of food to be delivered to the tables.

While sipping a liter of wine, we were able to look through the printed menu and its introduction: “Greeting, may you have amazing holidays and the most wonderful time here in Vlora! Thank you for choosing our Tavern! We offer you traditional, country-made food inherited from generation. Any meal is cooked in the moment it is ordered. Any meal has its own cooking time, from 40 minutes to 1 hour-30 minutes for the meat dishes.” We were told that the order of Lamb takes 1.5 hours to cook at minimum.

The food was delivered to our table by the two other business operators the “Daughter/Aunt” and the “Granddaughter/Neice”. With each dish, the ladies carefully named the dish and explained something about them. They paused in the delivery with an anticipatory smile in case we had any questions. It was very important to them that we understand what we were eating and how it had been prepared.

Throughout the meal we watched as “Grandfather” bustled and mopped, mopped and bustled. “Grandmother” was steady in her work as the love of each ingredient was folded into the next item to be baked. “Daughter/Aunt” greeted new guests and took care of details around the tavern while “Granddaughter/Neice” pivoted between teenage time on her phone and jumping to attention to serve guests or answer questions. Since this was our first traditional Albanian meal, we bit into each morsel with intension. A bite of sausage, no not spicy. A bite with the salce kosi. Oh, how delightful. The grilled vegetables were perfectly cooked as though they had just been harvested that morning. The lakror pie looked delicious from the outside having been kissed by the flames during baking. Half of it was tomato and onion. The other half was spinach and cheese. How creative were they in giving us both as we learned about Albanian food. Peeling back the top crust, revealed simple farm-to-table ingredients, but were layered in such a way as to make us think we were eating gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches.

When we finished as much of the delicious meal as we could, we asked for the remaining lakror to be wrapped. Along with our wrapped lakror they brought us, on the house as part of the meal, two glasses of Raki (a traditional distilled beverage of 40- 95% alcohol by volume) and two pieces of cake with a sweet cinnamon syrup. This was our first opportunity to trial the strong Raki, theirs being fermented in juniper barrels. Though it was quite strong, taking a bite of the delicate cinnamon cake after the sharp beverage made our mouths pop with cinnamon flavor.

Sofra e Lakroit welcomed us into their business and treated us like old friends. They served us food from their kitchen and their heart for a mere $25.00 and sent us home with delicious leftovers and memories. We highly recommend this restaurant if you visit Vlore, Albania.