TROIKA / Тройка/

Address: Assen Zlatarov Str
Tel: 943 31 73
Opening hours: Mon-Sat noon to midnight

The produce at Troika is always fresh and the linens, starched and white. Smiling service and a scopious menu complement the three inner stories and small hedged-off front patio of the restaurant.

Business lunches and the dinners of regulars – telecommunications bosses, television and film directors and staff, and locals – give the place a hopping feeling, with draught beer flowing, bowls of soup and plates of chicken or fish or pasta on the tables.

Bulgarian-Continental might best classify the food on offer, with equal quality being found in the lentil soup, home-roasted peppers, kebabche or chicken with spinach and bacon.

Entering in to the cosy space, you first pass by a hedge of junipers in orangerie, these surrounding the two tables that sit on the pavement, thus separated from the street and the bustling market next door. Once inside, six or so tables of dark-stained wood have a path to the little bar and the stairwells broken between them. Upstairs, a loft, really, has a few more tables and makes a nice area for business lunches or private gatherings, while the below-ground level has more seating and the WC. Paintings a step above the typical restaurant art hang on the wall, available for purchase at modest sums.

Sit, and the waitress – nearly the only one I’ve ever seen – promptly brings over the menus, which are bilingual Bulgarian-English. If you’re alone, you can ask to read the newspaper, but you’d have to know Bulgarian to get through it.

Lunch specials form the first page of the menu. The spinach nest is good, and is basically steamed spinach with an egg in the centre and baked, then topped with yoghurt sauce. The vegetable schnitzel is decent, nothing extraordinary, but for 2.90 leva it’s a deal. What this is is two largish-palm-sized disks of what seems to be instant mashed potatoes mixed with pureed mixed vegetables (so do not expect to be able to distinguish the vegetables, nor for any variation in interior texture), formed into flat ovals, coated in breadcrumbs and fried. Or maybe they’re purchased pre-prepared. They’re served with a yoghurt sauce and sprinkled with chopped dill. In any case, all the lunch items are less than four leva, and there’s enough variety to keep you happy for three weeks.

One thing that adds spark to the food is the shaker of paprika that sits on every table with the salt and pepper. It’s not like the food is bland but if you like yours a little more complex, then this is fun.

We recently reserved a table for seven at Troika for a working lunch and we arrived on time to find the tables already set up and waiting, arranged in a fashion that allowed discussion among all participants. Orders ranged from straight-off-the-menu green salads and tuna-pasta salad with mayonnaise sauce to special requests of steamed vegetables without salt or fat. All were granted without strange looks or utterances of it being impossible. The drinks arrived promptly, though the food came in a rather staggered fashion. There were no complaints with anything, the chicken in mustard sauce (about five leva) being declared tasty and worthwhile; the plate of mushrooms stuffed with ham, topped with a layer of kashkaval cheese and broiled having a toasty appearance; and the vegetables arrived as requested.

Portions are good-sized, large enough for a normal eater, particularly if a salad (of which there is a large selection) or soup (one meatless and one with-meat option available daily, at 1.20 and 1.50 leva, respectively) is also ordered along with a main course.

The alcohol on offer is extensive, with wine available by the bottle (up to about 20 leva) or glass (two to four leva), and harder drinks and beer.

Troika also has pizzas, available to eat there or for take away. We like the one with broccoli – a small (a tad smaller than a normal dinner plate) costs 3.30 leva. The dough was a little bland for my taste, but it was better than other pizzas I’ve had from nearby restaurants.

But overall, it’s a classy place, but not fancy, not expensive. It’s comfortable and there’s enough reason to return. And, my mum raves about their dessert of thick yoghurt with honey and walnuts.