Salome

From the outside, the restaurant is unremarkable: another building along Rakovska, yes, with a sign, but despite having seen it before I chose to visit, I had never paid it any special attention.

Prikazka/Приказка

Prikazka ("Fairytale") was one of those places that I walked past on a fairly regular basis while never actually going in.

SOUTHERN COMFORT: Ezerets Hotel

The Ezeretz Hotel is on the southern edge of Blagoevgrad, catering to tourists, businessmen and travellers on the highway to Greece, on which several signs for the hotel are prominently displayed. It is well-located, as in addition to being a university town and one of the largest and most prosperous cities in the region, Blagoevgrad is less than half an hour away from Rila Monastery. This makes it an attractive place for tourists to spend a night or two while exploring the area. The hotel's new construction is an inviting change from the many leftover communist-era hotels more prevalent outside of Sofia and a few tourism hotspots, and, situated on the edge of the city, it is easy to access from highway E79.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: ADASHITE

The restaurant/tavern Adashite is a relatively new fixture in Berkovitsa. Perhaps seeking to get in ahead of the much hoped-for real estate and tourist boom that many are attempting to engineer for the region, the restaurant has set up shop in a large, newly-painted building that looks like it might once have been a house. On either side, wooden gates lead to a garden area with seating in back on a roofed, flagstoned courtyard area or balcony, which I only discovered on my third visit, but which makes for quite a pleasant atmosphere. Inside, the upstairs is definitely the place to be, as the downstairs is far more cramped and not nearly so richly decorated.

RESTAURANT REVIEW: The Fox & Hound

In recent years, Sofia has seen a growing number of English-style pubs and restaurants, catering to expats looking for a taste of home and natives looking for the taste of someplace else. Among them, and a new addition at least for me, is The Fox & Hound on Angel Kunchev. From the outside, the restaurant is rather unassuming, and not nearly as visible as one would think granted its central location. I stumbled across it quite by chance while on Angel Kunchev Street on another errand, and was surprised to find an English pub just off Patriarch Evtimii that I never knew existed.

READING ROOM: Alive with the sound

In the movie The Seven Hills of Rome, Mario Lanza plays an American singer trying to make his way in Italy as he searches for his fiancee. Rebuffed at every turn, however, he is eventually told, "Tenors are an Italian national resource - we export them, not import them." The same might be said of Bulgarian basses, with whom the name Boris Christoff (1914-1993) has become synonymous. Famed for his interpretations of

The Diary

We've got a group of Americans here going around to various orphanages - spending time with the kids, basically. Today we run into a little friend of mine that got transferred from another home - when the kids hit seven, they get transferred from the preschool homes and into the school-age homes for seven- to 18-year-olds. As you can imagine, this is not an ideal situation, especially since the preschool

Hadjidraganovite Kushti

After living in a city for 13 years, there's a certain routine that sets in. You have your favourite stores, your favourite restaurants, your favourite taxi company, your favourite bus line, and you get out of the habit of finding new things. Sofia can still surprise you, though - take Hadjidraganovite Kushti (The Hadji Draganov Houses) for example: out on Kozlodui street, nearly in the shadow of the Princess Hotel, where,

Krusteva Kushta

Krusteva Kushta is a white building in a style that might best be described as a modern variant of Bulgarian Renaissance. Part of the second floor stretches out over the street, though the traditional angled wooden support beams aren't present. The roof is tiled and there is a stone wall attached to the building that surrounds the garden. Entrance is through a gate in the wall, whereupon one has the

Chepishev Restaurant

Chepishev restaurant is in Boyana, where the air is somewhat cleaner, the streets are somewhat quieter and the view goes a bit beyond the next apartment building. New money is not entirely without taste, at least in terms of real estate. The restaurant is a large building with the name painted on the side. A terrace/balcony on the second floor provides summer seating under several umbrellas, from which you can

Jin Yuan

Chinese restaurant Jin Yuan is on Tsar Simeon on a corner about two blocks out from the centre from where Tsar Simeon crosses Opulchenska. It's built into the first floor of an old communist apartment building, and considering that, they've done a good job of making the place look appealing. There's an overhang around the parts of the building used by the restaurant that looks like a typical Chinese

Chinese Restaurant Jin Yuan

Chinese restaurant Jin Yuan is on Tsar Simeon on a corner about two blocks out from the centre from where Tsar Simeon crosses Opulchenska. It's built into the first floor of an old communist apartment building, and considering that, they've done a good job of making the place look appealing. There's an overhang around the parts of the building used by the restaurant that looks like a typical Chinese

Vodenitsata

Vodenitsa, or "watermill", is one of those quality restaurants that one occasionally stumbles across while adventuring outside of Sofia. As it happens, Berkovitsa, the city where it is located, is not at all a bad place, though rather smallish and hard-hit economically - it has a pleasant city centre with fountains and (socialist) murals, trees, a historic clocktower and excellent views of mountains in several

The Diary

Drove J to the airport. Too bad she's leaving - I wish I had gotten to know her better. We had a good talk on the drive out. Afterwards, I went to see S to sign a contract for some work that our foundation is paying for on some solar panels we had installed at two orphanages. After that, it was off to Metro to spend the afternoon buying food to take to said orphanages. It's a lot of work to buy enough food to make

Tambuktu Fish Restaurant

I first thought of going to Tambuktu because of an American friend, recently arrived in Sofia, who wanted to have sushi and lived near the restaurant. Not knowing any other sushi restaurant in town, we agreed to go check it out. Though the address is listed as Aksakov Street, it is actually on the corner of Rakovski and Aksakov - Aksakov stops and turns into a pavement right before the restaurant, and then resumes

READING ROOM: Face to face with human trafficking in Bulgaria

There's an old saying that it's an ill wind indeed that blows no one any good. The reverse also holds true: Communism was an ill wind, and its fall a good thing, but the system brought some good after all, and its fall has not been without problems. After the fall of communism, closed societies opened, planned economies collapsed and people looked towards the West for opportunity. Unfortunately, many people seeking

The diary

Monday, January 15: Four hours of sleep last night - why is it that I always wait till the last possible second to go to bed before I have to fly the next day? Texas is a big place - it's a two-hour drive from Waco, where my brother lives, to Dallas, where I fly out of in the afternoon to come back to Bulgaria, and they're both pretty much in the middle of the state. Correction - WOULD have been a two hour drive, but when we

READING ROOM: From the sea to the laundry, and not yet finished

Nikola Zdravkov Ivanov is a 29-year-old Bulgarian who lives in Sofia, where he runs a laundry/dry-cleaning service. He has born in 1977 in Bulgaria to Bulgarian parents, but in 1991 moved to the Dominican Republic with his father, who was in charge of a large electrical station. He stayed there through 1996, a five-year period in which he visited the US on several occasions, as well as receiving his high school

Pchela

The Pchela ("bee" in Bulgarian) Restaurant, like so many good restaurants in Sofia, is tucked away out of sight of the main avenue, on a two-block, dead-end side street that no one would think to look down if he didn't already know what was there. Sveti Sedmochislenitsi Street is on the other side of Cherni Vruh Boulevard from the Kempinski hotel - close enough to the centre to be fairly accessible by car or some public

READING ROOM: Working with orphanages for more than 10 years, Andrew Ridgway shares what he has seen

Another problem with the children's homes and institutions in Bulgaria is the severe lack of Government funding. I volunteer for a charitable organisation called Bulgarian Child, which is among the many such organisations trying to help meet the needs of these children, but the needs are vast. The best-funded homes, those for handicapped children, receive just over four leva a day per child. The Helping Schools

Reaching towards the untouchable

Birhaleto - "club for humans"

Snuggled into the Stara Planina just north of the Petrohan pass lies and just past the raspberry stands in Burziya is the city of Berkovitsa. Though hard hit by unemployment and migration, Berkovitsa is nevertheless a picturesque city, at least partially spared from the ravages of communist residential architecture that devastated the urban landscape throughout so much of Bulgaria. The blocks are still

MANAGER PROFILE: Bulgaria in print

Yoncho Yonchev is one of the directors at Prosveta publishing house, the largest publisher of school materials in Bulgaria, where he works with "publishing politics", as he puts it. "In Bulgaria," he explains, "there are also many state educational requirements for publishers to follow: quality requirements from the Education Ministry coupled with a demand for improving the quality of the textbooks, and the requirement that

A night at the opera

One of the things I miss most about Bulgaria while away is the accessibility and affordability of culture. A fan of opera nearly all my life, the ability to attend frequent, quality performances without either either taking out a loan (as in Western Europe, where 200 euro is a not-unheard-of price) or driving a hundred kilometres (as in the US, where even regional operas are all too few and far between) is something to

READING ROOM: Bulgarian classroom recollections

He was born and lived in Tennessee, US, until he was 11. "That's when my parents decided to be missionaries in Bulgaria," recalls Andrew Ridgway not quite lackadaisically, an adult himself now, and living, still, again, in Bulgaria. The family (mom, dad and the three boys - Andrew is the oldest) then moved to Kentucky, where his parents attended seminary in preparation for the change of life. They ended up here in

Luciano's Viennese Salon

It's hard to say just what type of eating establishment Luciano's is: in a lot of ways, it's like a sladkarnitsa (cake and desserts shop) with a full restaurant menu, or maybe a full restaurant where most people just get dessert. But to be honest, the desserts here are pretty much a meal unto themselves, and if your dietary conscience will let you get away with making a meal out of an enormous bowl of ice-cream - or a

Manastirska Magernitsa (Monastery Cookhouse)

Manastirska Magernitsa is a quiet restaurant in an antique house in the very centre of Sofia, just off Rakovski Street. The trees growing in front obscure the building - and very nearly the sign above the gate - from the street, and between the buffer and the general lack of traffic on Han Asparuh, the restaurant and garden are surprisingly quiet. Reservations for seating are recommended - especially for those