[size=55:p3j00ogt]Sofia echo 30 July 2010
Black Sea gourmet: North versus South
North versus South is a classic divide of civilisation, long predating the US civil war. The rich versus the poor, the developed versus the ones trailing behind, the quick versus the slow, the disciplined versus the primal ones, the industrialists versus the farmers, Fitzgerald versus Hemingway, Germany versus Greece, fast food versus soul food.
This divide sometimes spans continents, other times – climate zones. But it can also appear and be exhausted within the span of 400km. Bulgaria's Black Sea coast is a close and clear example of that – here the differences between North and South seem to become all the more dramatic from year to year: luxurious resorts versus mass ones, infinity pools versus wooden tables on the beach, golf versus fishing, gourmet versus kruchma.
There is something very nice about that, something that can labelled, if one must, as a diversity of experiences. Depending on what we want and what we like, we head either North or South, impatient for our favourite pleasures, but patient to the accompanying mishaps.
Woes are present in every trip, they are our unavoidable anchor to reality, which often differentiates the present tense from the experiences of the past, aged and all the more beautiful for it. Nevertheless, the lighter and less noticeable that anchor, the better. And for all of us that believe in Bacchus, one of the certain ways to lighten that anchor is good food.
Where are the good restaurants on the Black Sea? The standard markers like the pleasant design (a sign of intent to make the experience pleasant for the customer) or the large crowd (testimony to popularity) seem to have lost their meaning in this part of the world and can often lead us into the most unbearable of places.
This is why Bacchus magazine has decided to check on all the restaurants that you are likely to pop into, whether you remember the place fondly or are now advised to visit for the first time: all the way from Dourankoulak Lake on the border with Romania to Rezovo on the border with Turkey.
The South
Despite its hideous copies of the National Palace of Culture (NDK) here and there, the South continues to bring back memories of the worn-out straw hat, the grains of sand sticking to your skin, the unpretentious establishments on the beaches and their commensurate level of service, artists, nudists, surfers, camping sites, tsatsa with beer and shopska with rakiya.
Care-free, easy, au naturel.
In Rezovo, the southernmost end of the Bulgarian Black Sea coast, the South is in full swing. To get there, you need to pass through forest, forest and yet more forest. Somewhere in between the trees is the famous and still beautiful Silistar beach (four leva entrance fee, please). The roadside markers remind you constantly that you are in the border area and the road itself ends in a mesh fence, behind which lies the awkward sight of a cubic church. If not for the laughable and somewhat underhand finger-wagging to our southern neighbours, the view would be unrivalled.
A quick look around identifies the local attraction – a new building with aluminium railing and a very green garden, home to some larks, an aquarium and the ubiquitous large-screen TV. This is Panorama restaurant, a classic South place. The menu is traditional: fresh fish, home-made caviar paste and salads. It comes with the predictable drawback – the very limited choice of wines, and one big advantage – the deep tranquility of the place and truly fresh fish.
The fish soup is overly hot and a bit oily, with the occasional bone, but delicious. Prices vary from the very affordable three to five leva for salads and 3.50 leva for fish soup to 11 leva for 100 grams of caviar paste. Still, one can stomach the price for the opportunity to sit at Bulgaria's end and stare into the deep blue sea.
The road north leads to Sinemorets, until recently a long-time favourite holiday destination for many famous Bulgarians looking to take a break from the bustle of the high life. But the wild nature and tranquility of Sinemorets is now solely the preserve of tales, since that part of the coast has been intensively developed and now even sports an all-inclusive complex.
The next stop is Ahtopol – a mass resort, once overgrown with fig trees, wild and compact, now the epicentre of the traditional seaside kitsch, gaudiness and – sadly – construction, household and all other kinds of refuse. The restaurant of Escada Beach hotel is an exception against the background of motley colours and appears better suited to a more exclusive resort.
The menu promises more than 100 fish dishes, athough reality is somewhat less impressive. The view is brilliant, but clearly distracting the chef, thus the cuisine is inferior to the interior. It is one of the places we include on our list more because of how it looks than for what it offers food-wise. Nevertheless, it is always nice to have something to be happy about.
Travelling further north in search of the taste, the road stops in Varvara, another favourite of bohemians. Its pride is the wild, that is to say not-built-upon, beach that is reached from the centre of the village through a winding and steep dirt road. It is truly tranquil, quiet and very unresort-like. The stars are huge and, like the street dogs, friendly.
In Varvara, all culinary roads and paths lead to Dimo, deservedly so. This is the place to eat here and just about anywhere else in the South, and it has been that way for years. It is in the very centre of the village, right next to the church. At first sight, the greyish, angular house looks out of place at the seaside, but this kruchma's garden has its own style – big wooden tables with benches, the traditional cherga rugs (it is a village, after all) and the multitude of sea shells that decorate the place. There is a big open space and an equally big TV, as well as wireless internet, which explains the laptops on most tables.
The menu is like a world in miniature – sea creatures and land ones and everything in between. There are many fish dishes and local specialties with the codename "
varvaritsa"
– eggplant, courgettes and other delicious tidbits, frogs' legs (whose former owners' relatives are clearly heard in the nearby ditch) and traditional meats. The fish is very fresh and the caviar paste is delightful. The prices are very reasonable, which is far from the rule on the Black Sea. The place is definitely worth the trip, no matter what the starting point, which would explain why it even has a fan page on Facebook.
But no matter how well one has eaten, the road calls on. The next stop is another star – Lozenets, or small Sofia, as it is known because of the throngs of Sofia residents that either own property there or just like having a drink in a Sofia-like bar or restaurant. The village is a very civilised and pleasant place, if you ignore the large number of buildings. The atmosphere is different from that of other motley mass resorts, which explains the elitist notes. The village is full of stylish and modern establishments and dream bars on the beach.
That is also the location of the restaurant that looks like the most interesting of the bunch – Mezze. Not because it is a clone of the Sofia restaurant, but because of the atmosphere – a large white terrace on the beach itself and the seldom-found, on the southern Black Sea coast, items on the menu – fresh pasta, lots of exotic spices, including saffron and truffles. The execution and presentation easily follow the declared intent.
The salad, albeit with a seafood twist (calamari, rucola, olives, courgettes and tomatoes), is not fresh. The same applies to stuffed peppers, but they are tasty. The fish is fresh, the wine list very well picked and the place carries a lunch menu. One other sign of attention to customers are olive oil and balsamic vinegar – it is embarrassing that after taking a tour of the Black Sea coast, one would single out such a trifling detail as a rare bonus. Another rarity is the bowl of water with lemon on the table after fish is served. That style and the prices are the exception in the Black Sea's South. The cloakroom is amusing, done like a beach-changing cabin. Overall, Mezze is a beautiful place which, with some better cuisine and service, would entice even mermaids to leave the sea. For now, however, they remain in their depths and the road continues on to Sozopol.
Surprisingly, despite the construction boom and development of surrounding areas over the past few years, Sozopol looks well-organised – everything is in order and there is no chaos. The city's experience in dealing with crowds is visible and as soon as you enter the Old Town, it is clear where to park, the central beach is tidy and so are the establishments on it.
Sozopol successfully balances between mass and elitist tourism. It is a place both for chalga and for jazz;
for fried fish on the beach and candle-lit dinners. Maybe that is why this is the only place south of Varna with designer cuisine – Urania bistro in the Old Town. Just above the sea, it has a glorious view of Old Town and a style setting it apart from the surrounding tourist kitsch. The establishment appears to have lost some of its freshness, maybe because of the recent storm or the accumulating years.
The genie in Urania's bottle is Deyan Dimitrov, a recognised avant-garde chef. The menu is not traditional, but less so than last year. This season, the emphasis is on home-made dishes. Fresh seafood, marinated fish, lamb with eggplant and green peas, home-made ice cream with strawberries, green figs with sugar nuts are just one of the faces of Urania. The other, for the fans of gourmet cuisine, are dishes like marinated fennel and toasted shrimp with yoghurt dressing and black truffles.
The turbot fillet is cooked in vacuum, with black risotto and lemon foam – a very summery taste – or with grape leaves, mushrooms and duck foie gras. The raspberry sorbet with mascarpone mousse is a dessert that has won international awards. Regardless of your tastes, every bite here is perfect. The new delight is the St Tropez drink: an ideal mix of rose wine, soda, coconut essence and lemon, which combined with the sea breeze and the view makes Urania's appeal hard to resist. You can expect well-picked wines, professional service and personal attention, which is a rarity. The prices are commensurate with the class of the establishment – a portion of turbot is about 40 leva, salads range between five and 10 leva, and wines are between 25 and 60 leva.
Curiosity is what helps overcome Urania's magic and drives us on to Bourgas, a city long avoided by culinary routes, but recently transformed by the appearance of beautiful restaurants with affectations of class. It is not quite the gourmet level of the North, but not the straightforward South either. The designer interiors come with menus that are better thought-out, but in their efforts to maintain a stable menu, they often ignore the day's catch and focus on fish like salmon, tuna, turbot, sea bream and sea bass.
La Perle Noire panorama restaurant in Hotel Bourgas is one of the three most class-conscious fish restaurants in the city. It offers an attractive interior, a good view, great service and a classic menu with some non-traditional elements. The restaurant has a good choice of wines but not a rich choice of fresh fish. The mussels in white wine with scallions are very good, as is the turbot fillet with black rice. The food is cooked and presented beautifully and it is also the first time on our trip north that we encounter a fish knife. The prices are extremely pleasing for a place of such class – salads are six to eight leva, appetisers range between five and 15 leva, the turbot is 27 leva and the wine list is extensive. All in all, a quiet and classy place.
The renovated Grand Hotel Primorets has two restaurants, the classic and the Mediterranean – Salina, with a huge terrace and white sun umbrellas reminiscent of the French Riviera. The menu is promising but the kitchen fails to deliver on the promise fully, whether because of the late hour or the persistent hangover from the recent opening. The smoked salmon tartare is too fresh (more like snezhanka salad than fish). The grilled sea bass with lemon jam and Provencal vegetables sounds better than it tastes, but at least the vegetables are tasty. The decoration (a salad leaf and several wrinkled olives) is dated, but the service is sweet.
Prices match the setting (the establishment's biggest draw) and the garden is stunning. One can only hope that the cuisine will catch up with the interior decorations.
Del Mar is another classy fish restaurant across the city's sea garden in Lazour borough, with large aquariums and a garden. The food is great and the design on the plate follows the cuisine. The tiger prawns with champagne and spicy sauce are excellent representatives of their species and the sauce is well-balanced. The fish on the menu follows the convention of the luxury restaurants, with an emphasis on traditional fish, not Black Sea catches. The sea bream fillet with dill mayonnaise is great, but the potatoes fail to reach the high standard set by the sauce. The prices are commensurate with the menu itself and during the summer the restaurant offers a fresh fish menu and a large garden. The selection of wines to match the standard of the food is a difficult task but not impossible and, hopefully, they will soon grace the tables of Del Mar. The service is professional, if slightly careless.
The North
Open-back dresses, champagne, cigars, high heels, gold, silver cutlery, limousines, casinos, gourmet – this world of class, style and prestige is found in all its brilliance in Varna.
Varna is the gourmet capital of Bulgaria and the best restaurants can be found in this city, with their designer chefs working pure magic or chemistry. One of them is Velin Velikov at Moussala, a chemist-magician-chef who combines the earthly with the divine, the heart and the brain. The restaurant in the heart of Varna sets the highest standard of cuisine and the service is appropriate – silver cutlery, white gloves and English service. To enjoy the cuisine to the fullest, you can order the seven-stage tasting menu (95 leva). Saltwater shrimp, salmon, sea bream and the wonderful duck foie gras torchon with jellied quince offer enough gustatory satisfaction for at least two people. The wine selection is several years old and could use freshening up. The prices are a pleasant surprise given the restaurant's class.
Northbound after leaving the city, the overwhelming desire to touch the sea and taste the fresh fish is satisfied at the Roussalka tavern on Kabakoum beach. Blue and white, like a postcard from Santorini, the restaurant offers fresh fish, caviar paste, mussels, home-baked bread, ouzo and retsina. The service is sweet and the food is good. You will be surrounded by beach-goers, but in this part of the Black Sea coast, that is unavoidable.
After this brief break from Northern elitism, the road leads on to gourmet dinosaurs, although the gourmet restaurants in the resorts north of Varna do harbour some disappointment. Both La Terrasse (Oasis Hotel, Riviera) and Silver Gourmet (Astera Hotel, Zlatni Pyassutsi), with their distinctive interior decoration and interesting menus, give rise to expectations that are not always satisfied. A portion of fish can cost as much as 60 leva, should it even be available, and it might not be entirely fresh.
La Terrasse, in the Oasis boutique hotel, a two-story colonial building with high ceilings, is definitely worth a second look. The restaurant's large terrace offers a view of the sea over its infinity pool. The Mediterranean menu fits this spacious, white and beautiful place. The sea bass fillet with hollandaise sauce is neither cooked properly, nor as fresh as promised. The staff at times seems jumpy and sometimes uninterested, but the big wedding in the main room might have something to do with that. The prices are pretentious: salads range between 10 and 25 leva, the sea bass is 40 leva and the turbot about 60 leva. The wine selection is not equal to the interior design, but the surcharge makes up for that. An ideal place to vacation and worth the trip, but not for a gourmet.
The road to Zlatni Pyassutsi (Golden Sands) is busy, chaotic and noisy. Astera Hotel is centrally-located, but the view of the beach greets you from the very entrance. Silver Gourmet is distinct with its minimalist interior, with the occasional grey, silver and red – a modern version of the Ice Queen's palace, a welcome sight for those frazzled by the multitude of colours in what once was a very elitist resort.
The initial joy dissipates as soon as one finds out that even some of the items on the short menu are gone. There is no fresh fish and fish soup has to be ordered in advance. The wine list is not what it should be, but the good news is that a more traditional menu is coming, and perhaps has already arrived as this goes to print. The cuisine is good and the service is great, but the expectation for gourmet cuisine is unfulfilled and the prices are on the high end. Still, Silver Gourmet is a good option to hide from the throngs of tourists and the motley colours that rule the resort.
The search for Zen and peace of mind drives us on. Perhaps we can find it in the middle of the Botanical Garden in Balchik, a more royal and retro place than the ones we've visited so far. The town is full of trenches and any effort to navigate it by car is punished either by schizophrenic road markers or by clouds of dust. For fresh fish, the place to go is Korona, right below the palace in the garden, which every day buys the catch of the local fishermen. The place is traditional, the prices are acceptable and the kitchen is the benchmark that the rest of the town aspires to match.
Those in search of less traditional dishes should visit Byalata Kushta (White House), with tables right above the sea giving you some distance from the live music playing in front of the house. This is the place to go to if you are looking for fresh fish, steamed mussels, squid carpaccio, snails, lentil salad, turkey with chestnuts, Roquefort and spinach, turkey magret with fresh mushrooms, brown sauce, blueberries and capers. The prices are normal and entirely commensurate with the place.
On and on northward the road becomes quieter as it passes through pastel fields, the multitude of sunflowers reminiscent of a Van Gogh landscape, provided you disregard the surreal white windmill generators with their slowly-moving sails. The throngs are gone, this is the area of gated communities that offer exorbitant luxury for the eyes and palate, or at least try to.
Blacksearama golf course lies in the middle of a picturesque natural decor, with a view to the sea and heights occasionally shrouded in mystic mists. The restaurant has a solid stone presence and the view is stunning. The cuisine is great whenever it is in the hands of Ivan Kirin, yet another star chef. The service is professional, but the wine list is slightly outdated. One of the positives is that all vegetables are environmentally clean and grown on the premises.
For a true gourmet experience, ask for the fresh offers or have a chat with the chef, who pays personal attention to all guests that show an interest in his offerings. The prices are commensurate with the exclusive environment of the complex – a portion of exquisitely prepared turbot will set you back 60 leva.
Further north is El Balcon del Mundo in Kaliakria complex – the view might not be as great as that from Blacksearama, but the restaurant is a lot lighter and feels more appropriate for its seaside surroundings. The bar, lounge, restaurant and bistro are all an exercise in minimalism and attention to detail. The menu offers light food from every end of the world begging to be tasted, cocktails and a good wine list with very reasonable prices. The view and the nice music at times are forced to compensate for the products choice and their taste, as well as the staff's occasional disappearing act, but the place has character and, by the looks of it, ambitions that it is yet to fulfill.
Driving on, the fields and the stylish windmills emphasise the lack of civilisation. The embodiment of tranquility, timelessness and a truly unparalleled seaside establishment is the Dulboka mussels farm. From here on, the North looks a lot more like Rezovo than Varna. The road leading there is the kind of absurd small road that you follow only because of the desperate belief that it must lead somewhere. And it leads to mussels, lots of them – appetisers, main dishes and desserts – very fresh and very tasty. The service is efficient and very polite.
The mussels farm is one of those unpretentious establishments where it is difficult to stop ordering because every next dish is inviting you to discover more seafood secrets. The place is always full, but that is understandable.
Getting out is difficult because the dirt road up the hill is so steep, but the next destination is worth it. Not only because the road markers read Romania or the bird-watching spot labelled "
not a restaurant"
, but also because it is in the middle of the exotic-sounding Dourankoulak marsh, according to the road map. And at the end of the trip along the Black Sea, you can taste one last time fresh fish, both fresh-water and salt-water, in an establishment that draws its name from a fairy tale – Zlatna Ribka (Goldfish), which carries a menu as extensive as it is classic.
The establishment sprouts up unexpectedly (provided that you see the small roadside marker with no arrow and take an instinctive right turn) and the immediate word that comes to mind to describe it is "
patchwork"
. Even more unexpected is how full the restaurant is, but should you try the fish – catfish or turbot, fish soup with spicy sauce, caviar paste or crayfish – you will know why. The service is efficient, the prices are very accessible (the catfish is seven leva and the turbot is 13 leva) and the wine list is appropriate for the location. For places like this, the long road is worth it.
Fri Jul 30, 2010 8:25 am
