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.

The challenge

I'm one of those people who likes trying new things, particularly when it comes to food. Even if one of my favourites is on a menu, I'm always going to pick the thing I haven't eaten before. To me a great dining experience isn't about eating the same thing week in week out, it's about trying something new and exotic, ideally in an odd location with even odder decor. It's not about starter, main then pudding it's about the extraordinary ways you can eat your food or have it served. How it can be found, grown, killed, harvested, cooked and eaten using a variety of complex and foreign devices which baffle your average Englishman.

I've travelled a bit, and eaten some odd things in some odd places, but I’ve been thinking. Why do I have to go abroad for these experiences? Surely I don't need to go to Nepal for my Momo, Ethiopia for my Tibs Wet or Peru for a bit of Guinea Pig? I wonder... can you experience every culinary experience right here in London? There are a lot of restaurants in London... absolutely loads, but is there a restaurant for every country in the world?

More importantly, if you ate food from every country in the world, which would be the dullest? Which would be the spiciest? All in all, which would be the best?

This blog is my attempt to find out.

I'm going to attempt to eat my way around the world without leaving Britain's capital city. I'll be going in alphabetical order, Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, using the list of UN countries here and adding Taiwan (who aren't in the UN), Scotland and Wales for good measure. Obviously I'm going to struggle to experience all 195 of them (do you know of an Andorran restaurant, a Kiribatian cafe or a Panamanian diner?) but I'm going to have a very good go. If I miss any, and there turns out to be a place somewhere I didn't know about, then I'll go back and cover it again, I'll also go to any place that'll serve me the national dish for any country with no restaurant.

If you can help me, I'd be most grateful. If you know of a restaurant representing an obscure country somewhere like Djibouti, Liechtenstein or Micronesia, then please get in touch to help me towards my goal. Obviously I won't be needing help with China, India or the USA, but if you want to suggest an obscure cuisine you've enjoyed then post its name as a comment.

And to begin… Afghanistan

Afghanistan

Central Asia isn't a region I associate with good food, but the Afghan Kitchen had been recommended to me by several friends so I was intrigued to try their fare. Having the name of the country in the title is always going to sway me towards a restaurant in this global endeavour. The restaurant wasn't exactly kitted out in traditional Afghan style, with its white walls, bamboo and pine benches and I would normally prefer authenticity in every aspect of the experience, but I can't say it wasn't a pleasant place to eat.

With great difficultly I set my mind to rolling, dry hills, populated by beige clothed men with roll-up hats each carrying an anti tank missile launcher. I imagined them settling down around a fire in a cave to enjoy a meal to celebrate victory over some invader or another before preparing to defend themselves against a new foe.

With this in mind, the food was surprisingly light and delicately flavoured. We had Lamb with Spinach; Chicken with Yoghurt and Lemon; and the Roast Pumpkin. Afghan bread and rice went well with them all. The 'Afghan pickle' we ordered looked exactly like water you'd find in a disused well, but it didn't taste too bad. We tried the only Afghan sounding drink on the menu - Dogh - which reminded everyone of tzatsiki. Perhaps this is more of an acquired taste, it's not a flavour I like to drink, but then I can't think of a savoury drink I do like. It’s the sort of thing you drink at the end of a meal not during, but it was interesting none the less. The baklava we had as dessert tasted particularly Turkish, but perhaps it’s the same everywhere.

I'm suspicious that this isn't the most authentic Afghan meal you could eat, but if it is, I now know what keeps Osama and Co. hidden in the mountains. I’d bet my last dollar it beats the food in Guantanamo Bay.