Simple Albanian Lunch

When our cruise ship stopped for the day in Durres, we hired a local Albanian guide to take us around to Kruje and Tirana, the capital.  He took us to a family-run restaurant near downtown Tirana so we were treated to a home-cooked meal.  It was a simple Albanian lunch, well, lunch is the main Albanian meal so there is really nothing simple about it if you have to cook it.

What we had:

Simple salad of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onions

Simple bread - but memorable because it was dense and crispy with great texture

Simple appetizer dip of tomatoes, eggplant and cheese but it's rather complex in taste and texture - I  love it, especially with the bread.  They gave us five bowls of these for eleven of us  - if we'd finished this, we probably wouldn't need anything else for lunch.

Simple vegetable soup with lots of veggies

Spinach and cheese phyllo - I know, it's Greek, it's Turkish, but it's also Albanian - it's a very common dish for this area of the world but hardly simple

  

And finally the meat dish - simply grilled.  I love the lamb but everybody else voted for the very tender chicken breast

The name of the restaurant, in case you are ever in Tirana...