Address:
53 Vasil Levski Blvd. (near Popa)
Tel.: 980 4362
Opening hours:
Midday - 1 am
Credit cards not accepted

Primavera is one of my local joints, a collection of restaurants near my house, each serving an individual purpose depending on the time of day, my mood and my companions. It's role in this constellation is clear. I take friends to Primavera on those evenings when we want Bulgarian fare in a setting that's cleaner and more well-lighted than typical, smoky mehanas.

With two floors, art pieces (odd driftwood-like constructions) on the walls and muted red and green colours throughout its dining rooms, Primavera feels more like a formal restaurant than a tavern. But it serves tavern fare — fresh carrot and cabbage salads, pizzas and the like — and often plays Balkan music loudly and hosts groups of coffee-drinking, chain-smoking locals heartily discussing who-knows-what for hours on end.

What's really special about Primavera is that it offers excellent Serbian grilled meats.

At the risk of being attacked by a lukanka-wielding Bulgarian patriot, I must say that Serbian grilled meat is much better than its Bulgarian counterpart. The Serbs use more spices than the Bulgarians, mixing cheese and chopped onions and peppers into their kebache, seasoning their pork fillets more liberally and generally adding more pizazz to their dishes.

 I've heard somewhere that countries with historically successful agriculture and favourable climates tend to lack sophisticated cuisines, owing to the abundance of regular, healthy food that requires no adulteration. (This news was delivered as an excuse for Ireland's cooking [or something like that], though I can't think of anything I prefer more on a Sunday morning than soda bread and Irish breakfast tea.)

One might think that Bulgaria, an agricultural nation that has suffered few if any major natural famines, would qualify as one allowed to ignore culinary panache. But the Bulgarians have created amazing salads and stews that show real ingenuity in the kitchen. Serbia, meanwhile, seems no more or less fertile than Bulgaria. Yet somehow the Serbs have progressed beyond seasoning their meat solely with salt and pepper.

Cevapcici, for example, are small fingers of grilled meat mixed with onions. They are tastier than Bulgarian kebache, which often are little more than processed pork pounded into a roll. Pleskavice are meat paddies with more flavour than Bulgarian kyoftes, which always seem to need lutinitsa for flavour.

The last time I visited Primavera, my companion and I ordered an array of grilled meats, salads and nonalcoholic drinks. Our bill totalled 22 leva. Service was adequate; it would have been nice if the waitress came around more often asking if we wanted anything, but most expats will overlook this deficiency.

My companion, who was visiting from London, was a bit put off by the waitstaff, however, a reminder of how quickly one changes one's standards after living in a foreign place. She was also annoyed at how a dish called "Mexican Chicken" that featured chicken legs contained no legs at all, but chicken meat that may or may not have originated on a leg. Again, it's the sort of thing expats just shrug off.

Though I must add that, thinking she was going to receive wings on the bone, my companion ordered chilli sauce. This sauce reminded me of the red-hot stuff we put on Buffalo wings (chicken wings prepared a la Buffalo, New York) in the United States. When I smelled the chilli sauce, I, too, was disappointed that they didn't have any real drumsticks.

Our dessert, a chocolate palachinka (pancake), was excellent. The chef carmalised apples and raisins, dressed them on a scoop of chocolate icecream, wrapped the icecream and fruit with a crepe and poured chocolate and caramel sauce over the crepe. Yes, we wanted another, but we didn't indulge.

For those readers seeking a healthier version of the above, the manager, seeing that our plate was clean, mentioned that the same dessert could be made with honey and yoghurt. I can't recommend this version, as I've never ordered it. I can, however, say that Primavera specialises in more than one foreign dish.

Besides making a mean Serbian skara, Primavera also delivers an excellent tiramisu. I've ordered their tiramisu on many visits and, truth be told, would take it any day over Irish soda bread and tea.