Vagabond is a simple restaurant located on one of Sofia's calmer streets away from all the city's racket. Serving both Bulgarian and Russian foods, it is small enough to be cosy but also to make it worth reserving a table before you arrive.

An immense black metal gate occupies the entrance and, although the dark colour contrasts with the crimson-painted walls, this creates a cool classy atmosphere. The outdoor patio contains wooden tables and benches that elegantly complement this atmosphere, although it is a pity these are covered with paper tablecloths.

Around the patio's stone floor are well-trimmed green bushes and red flowers, where a lurking cat has seemingly adopted the restaurant as its own. More flowers hang from a cloth awning that provides both shade for the diners and support for a young grape vine. This should be astonishingly beautiful when it has grown for a few more years.

The restaurant is pleasant if simple and, equally, the menu does not have a vast choice of different foods. That said, you are presented with a fair choice though these are written in Bulgarian and strangely only half are translated into English.

For starters there are soups for around two leva, a range of cold and hot appetisers for three leva and salads for around four. A selection of fish, chicken, veal, and pork main courses are offered, accompanied by any garnish you desire. Any dessert, of course, sounds wonderful to people who have eyes larger than their stomachs.

Since we were keen to try their range of fish, we avoided ordering directly from the menu and instead asked for a special platter to be made up. This consisted of different cold, smoked or marinated fish from the appetisers menu, which the waiters were quite willing to provide.

We then ordered olives to accompany the wine, a caesar salad served with a pleasant mustard sauce, some homemade kiupoolo salad, which had an amazing soft, fresh taste, and lastly a salad of different Bulgarian specialties such as roast peppers, shopska, kiupoolo, and fresh buffalo cheese.

It may not seem a lot to eat but it was more than enough for a group of four people looking for a good meal.

It started raining and we had to continue our eating indoors as raindrops were falling through the cloth roof onto our food. The restaurant's interior was quite different although the familiar dark tables and chairs remained.

Around the compact dining room the walls were painted sky blue with several clouds here and there, providing a background for the peculiar hot air balloons floating about. On the walls, red velvet curtains were tied back from cute cottage windows with golden string. Most remarkable were the golden curtains painted on one wall, as if one was looking out of a sultan palace's window on to the sky. Although most people stay outdoors in the garden, the indoors deserve a visit just to enjoy the great effort which have obviously been put into them.

Our food was excellent and we were provided with enough toasted bread throughout our meal to finish off all the fish. For dessert we ordered chocolate eclairs served with ice cream, chocolate and blueberry sauce. These were splendid looking and rich but very filling. Still, they all slowly disappeared and we were left with only a little wine and Radio Edno playing in the background.



Vagabond:

Address:

5, Svetoslav Terter St.

Telephone: 944 1465

Price category: Medium