It was the fourth restaurant we had stopped into the final night in Smolyan, and it was getting late. We stopped there randomly, passing by it after having rejected the three initial places: the first one because it was a snack bar instead of the promised "nice restaurant", and the other two because they resembled fishbowls, filled with bad music and stale smoke instead of water.

Crossing the threshold into Venus Club was like stepping into a New Jersey diner, where the decor has not changed in nearly 20 years and it is all the better for it, with vinyl booths and a low ceiling and different seating areas and artwork that would look cheap anywhere else and the odd child or two running around, discreetly and merrily.

The waiter, patting one of the children on the head, brings the menus, which are bilingual-enough in Bulgarian-English. There are cocktails, pages of alcohols and good local wines (plus Iskra "champagne" available for eight leva a bottle...), and, eventually, food. A page full of "breakfast" items like breaded cheese or crepes with jam and, letting us know that foreign tourists have frequented Venus before, a traditional full English breakfast with a Bulgarian addition – sweetcorn. We opt instead for salad and a beef kyufte (two leva) and beans with nadenitsa (about 10 leva), selected from the remaining four or five pages of the menu.

Other types of items available include spaghetti, sandwiches, pizzas, fish, pork, chicken and tasty appetisers like village-style liver. A few traditional Rhodope Mountain dishes are listed, but the two I ask about – kachamak (think ‘bowl of polenta topped with grated feta cheese’) and Rhodope klin (similar to a banitsa filled with rice) – are not available that night.

In fact, it’s a cute menu, in that it starts off with salads being listed under the heading ‘if you are watching your weight, eat a salad!’ or something like that; and then, the desserts are indicated by: ‘end of the diet’. Obviously! But there were some desserts unusual in this country, for, in addition to the drained yoghurt with fruit preserves (3.50 leva), or the chocolate torta garache, there was also fruit salad.

But about the salads. Well, the waiter was really congenial and when I asked for a salad of just lettuce and roasted sweet peppers (not on the menu), he asked if I would like anything else on it, and suggested that I just chose add-ons from other salads on the menu. And it came, just as ordered, with lettuce and sweet pepper and pickles and peeled (!) tomatoes, and he brought two plates so we could share it, even without having asked for such.

And then came the palm-sized kyufte, juicy and seasoned with cumin, and the Smolyan beans and sausage. A word about the beans: Smolyan beans are a product of the region, about the size of the first section of your thumb, and mottled burgundy-black. These were cooked to have no hard spots and no mushiness, in other words, perfectly, and then mildly seasoned. The pinwheel of nadenitsa was accompanied by lyutenitsa (roasted sweet pepper-tomato relish) and a few slices of grilled red onion. The lyutenitsa almost tasted like it could have been homemade, so I ordered some. And it was good.

We had also decided to try out the cocktails: a margarita (seven leva), which was purely tequila, cointreau and lemon juice, and a Cuba libre (6.50 leva), served with plenty of fresh lime quarters. It had been something of an experiment ordering them, and it turned out successful. Enough to order a second round.

Venus had, before it was born in 1992, been an eatery or café or something called Rodopchanka, and, apparently, according to the little story in the menu, people still refer to it as such. Well, we know it as Venus, and are all the better off because of it. If Venus were in Sofia, it would have earned itself two regular customers.

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Overall: 4/6
Service: 4/6
Atmosphere 5/6
Food 3/6
Price  $$ ($ up to 12 leva a person for three courses; $$ 12 to 20 leva pp; $$$ 20 to 35 pp; $$$$ 35 and over pp)

Address:
11 Blvd Bulgaria, city of Smolyan
Tel: 0301/ 621 12
Open: 24 hours/7 days a week (kitchen open 8am-11.30pm, sandwiches and crepes available during the remaining hours)
Credit cards: yes