Eat Like Ushi

Brothers seemed to be a well rated dining venue and it surprised me to find the building with a gated metal fence just off the main road, with a dumpsite of building shell and neglected cars in the adjacent carparking area. Interesting. It was a quiet lunch after spending the morning at the ruins of Butrint National Park.

There is an enclosed spit outside in the courtyard but due to the off-season, it wasn't in use.

The minimally English speaking elderly couple cooking and serving were quite homely.

- Spicy cheese grilled topped with olive oil and peppers;
- Stuffed peppers with rice 550lek - quite simple, salty and nice;
- Greek souvlaki with kofte 650lek - very ugly kofte that were quite average. But the bread and tzatziki very good.

I have to be honest and say the food was average. It also didn't look like the pictures of dishes on the front of the restaurant. Maybe it's an off-season thing...

After picking up our first ever hitchhiker, a young Chinese girl who was travelling for a year and was currently hitchhiking her way through Albania (respect), we dropped her off and went to the bakery. Barba Niko is located up the top of the hill along the main road and was a pitstop for some small supplies before the steep drive down toward the hotel and the beach.

It has some ok byrek and some very good flat bread rolls. These were perfect with cheese and smoked ham. They also have some good dessert. Tre leche (3 milks) was like a sponge soaked in milk with jelly. Baklava was quite sweet with some crunch and pistachios.

They are also open 24h a day and have some basics like milk and yoghurt.

I was looking for a nice restaurant with good food and a fancy sunset view. The choices I found on Google were between Fevan and Genti. In the end I chose Genti because a picture of prawns looked good and I thought it might be more Albanian, whereas Fevan was Greek. After eating a lot of meat generally, it was nice to see seafood featuring on the grill menu.

In the end it was a terrible mistake. The sunset was fiery and beautiful, but unfortunately on their balcony they have a very large curtain shade that blocks most of the view. We asked them to raise it and they said they would but didn't.

It seems like primarily a sports bar. A football/soccer game was showing and as a result there were lots of men sitting around watching, and almost wondering why two tourists were there. Maybe because they knew the food wasn't good and would never eat it themselves.

- Big shrimp 1200lek for 300g - these were tiny prawns with ok texture and decent flavour, but I can't imagine how they can be big. There's no way 9 of those could be 300g either;
- Octopus 1000lek for 300g - seriously terrible. Not crisp not tender and flavourless. They were the ends of leftover skinny tentacles;
- Grilled vegetables 400lek - very good with eggplant, light zucchini and peppers;
- Village salad 300lek - standard and fine. Lots of onions, some feta and olives.

Maybe the meat grills would be better. I'd probably prefer to avoid the place altogether actually.

For a comparison of what 300g of prawns should be, look at Ftelea in Ksamil (https://eatlikeushi.posthaven.com/ftelea-fishop-and-grill-ksamil-09-2019)