CITY CENTER SOFIA
2 Arsenalski Blvd
Tel: 963 44 80 [fancybg.com]
E-mail: fancyccs@fancybg.com
Open: 10am to midnight

There is a variety of serving staff that appear to aspire to working in a seaside restaurant in the hope that one day they could stand by, their facial expressions somewhere between inscrutable and resentful, as the place falls into the ocean and the customers drown.

Whether on land or by the sea, this type is represented everywhere, and certainly among those who “greet” you on entry to restaurant Fancy.

We arrived at about 1.50pm on a Saturday, already not quite at our ease given the struggle to find parking in the basement of City Center Sofia, and entering the door and scanning the near-full place for an empty table, were left unattended by the black-clad waitress who pointedly looked elsewhere as she leaned unkemptly against a pillar. Finally, a grey-clad woman, presumably the duty manager, appeared and unsmilingly told us that the place was practically full. (Among this variety of serving staff, you get extra points for treating would-be customers like myopic idiots.) There was, however, one table that could seat the two of us and our child. “It’s non-smoking,” said grey-clad woman with dark hopefulness. “That’ll be fine,” we replied, and grimly she conceded that we could have it.

Even though we had been to Fancy many times, in its early days because we liked it and later sometimes only as a matter of convenience because we were going to see a film or had been shopping, this visit was made specifically for the purpose of this review. I recorded notes and statistics on various matters. From the time our menus were handed over until our orders were taken, 10 minutes elapsed, the outer limit of acceptability. At the end of the meal, from handing over the cash to getting change took six. In the span of our meal, 55 minutes in all, and given the view from our corner table, I not once saw any member of the serving staff smile. Should the makers of the next Star Trek movie be looking out to cast female Vulcans, I can commend the staff of Fancy for the consistently slightly forbidding impassivity of their facial expressions.

The key point about Fancy is the unpredictability and inconsistency of its quality. The first time I went, I ordered the calamari salad (300g, 7.60 leva) and thoroughly enjoyed it. I ordered it again the next time, to find that the ingredients and quantity varied from the first time, and that the amount of calamari had decreased. I have ordered it every time ever since, as a sort of parlour game to see quite what they will come up with. The trend in recent months has been that the proportion of carrot has been increasingly steadily. Honestly, it should now be called a carrot salad, with calamari mentioned as one of the ingredients.

While Fancy bills itself as a pizza-pasta restaurant, in recent months it has had monthly themed special cuisines. Some time last year, the sausages and beer produced in honour of Bavarian month were really good. February is Austrian month, and the “Vienna potato soup with bacon and porani mushrooms” ordered by my wife turned out to be good and tasty, and she enjoyed it while I concluded that, were my salad the National Assembly, the carrots would have a majority sufficient to amend the constitution, while the calamari would be a disgruntled minority splinter group.

Our full order was the soup (3.90 leva), the salad, the pesto pasta (5.90 leva), ravioli with beef (7.80 leva), a large Shoumensko dark beer and 500ml of draught Cabernet (six leva), followed by pana cotta (3.50 leva). The pesto pasta was acceptable, but notwithstanding the claim made on the restaurant’s website, it is difficult to believe claims about everything being made fresh. The impression was rather that the sauces came out of a jar – a very large jar, perhaps, but a jar nonetheless. The ravioli was too thin, too dry, and managed to be simultaneously slightly powdery and slightly gummy. Up against the memory of the tinned ravioli I sometimes ate as an undergraduate somewhat more than 26 years ago, this ravioli placed as the runner-up. But memory is a malleable thing, unlike bad ravioli.

Our bill came to 36 leva and I added a two leva tip when our change arrived; less than 10 per cent, I know, but I deducted a small penalty for the resentment at my presenting a 100 leva note in payment.