Albania

The Alba

It was my birthday a couple of weeks back so I decided to kill two birds with one stone and invited everyone to a lovely sounding Albanian place, Zigzag in Walthamstow. About 10 of my friends made the effort to get up there and meet me for my 29th. Slight drawback though, although the website suggests they’re a restaurant as does the sign outside, they only food they actually had was peanuts. Not particularly brilliant or Albanian peanuts either. Not even Albanian drinks. I was mocked heartily by all. We went for a Chinese.

So it was with a little nervousness that I headed out to Maida Vale to find Lisi with only my girlfriend in tow, now OFFICIALLY the only Albanian restaurant in London. A moment of panic hit me when I couldn’t find it at the correct address, but I quickly realised they’d just changed the name to Alba and put a heck of a lot of Italian food on the menu. In fact, the Albanian cuisine (all five dishes of it) was restricted to a small corner on the back of the menu.

I don’t think anyone else was eating in there which isn’t a good sign, so me and the girlf pretty much ordered a small portion of everything they had and hoped for the best. While we waited for the meal they decided to blast out Frank Sinatra’s greatest hits, enjoyable, but not really Albanian. One of the only things I know about Albania is that they like Norman Wisdom but there was no sign of him anywhere, just a few black and white pictures of Pristina from the early 20th century. One wonders whether Albania has changed much since.

The food was a pleasant surprise, I had beef sausages and Yash had grilled chicken. We’d both been tempted by some Middle Eastern inspired kebabs, or the beef hash steak but decided to try the items which sounded the most Albanian. Both the sausages and the chicken were very tasty and came with a spicy salad which I now know is a normal salad with slices of raw chilli. One of the reasons I started this blog was to discover the odd eating habits of the world and this would be my first odd discovery: Albanians really like cream cheese. It came with everything, even spread on the bread that turned up with our roasted pepper starter. We ended up having a discussion of whether they were bringing in Albanian cheese or just using Philadelphia, but it was very tasty all the same.

It’s a shame that this place has had to put so much Italian food on the menu in order to survive, I suppose it’s something to do with the location or perhaps the lack of adventure of others, but Albanian food is delicious and we should be eating more of it. It is an excellent mix of Middle Eastern and European tastes and it’s a lovely change from your standard kebab place. If you’re ever in Maida Vale and feeling peckish, I’d recommend it.