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| - On the whole, this restaurant does give a new patron a great slice of European cuisine and it is worth noting that if you've never been here before that you should try it out because most of the food as it is now is delicious, but having been here in the past and knowing what these foods really were has really soured my experience.
It's been a long time since I had been back to this place since its first inception. Back then this place was one of the only occupied storefronts in a dead strip mall. This place had a menu that was meat and cheese heavy and showcased a wide assortment of Eastern Bloc varieties.
The appeal of this place in addition to the great food was the tell tale sign of a great hole in the wall joint: Authentic European food, sketchy European groups of men and women engaging in non-English conversation and a woman running the show who knew what was good and made sure you ate it.
The most notable things were:
Shopska salad
-It has the creamiest Bulgarian feta cheese. Don't mistake this feta for Greek feta. This is incredible.
Cevape
-Homemade fat finger sized sausages served with lepina, a type of yeasty flatbread.
Artisian Charcuterie Plate/Cheese Plate
-These 2 are definite musts for light eating and drinks
Leskovacka pljeskavica
-similar to the cevape in flavor but served like an over sized burger
There were also a few kabob-like meats and a few other sausages similar to the cevape that were so delicious.
So why the poor rating? Mostly due to the fact that what I described is what I was hoping to find on this most recent visit today.
Our waiter informed us that he was brand new and didn't know much of the menu or the wine selection. He also pointed out on each trip back to our table that nobody was assisting him as he was learning. I'll point out here that for whatever reason he was not our waiter by the end of our meal.
We got the Beef Stroganoff Ragu, Thracian Clay Pot, Chicken Soup, Chebureki, Bacon wrapped dates and the Beef and Lamb Confit. We were really interested in the Thracian Clay Pot as it was recently featured on a Food Network show.
The Stroganoff was ladled over wild mushroom plemeni, a kind of Russian tortellini. This stroganoff had a lot of creamy goodness but was completely lacking the meat.
I'll get to the Thracian Clay Pot shortly. The Chicken Soup was desired by my kids ages 8 and 6, as well as the bacon wrapped dates. The chicken soup was quite chunky with big chicken flavor. The first round of dates looked like they spent about 1 minute too long in the pan where one side was cooked good the other burnt. We were informed that the cook likes to cook it that way to which our reply was, "Please give us unburned bacon wrapped dates." They were very good about getting this order back after the rest of our items had come out.
The Chebureki was akin to a samosa where it is a flattened dough item filled with something and deep fried in this case, a delicious meat filling and topped with some dill and chopped scallions. Fairly standard in flavor and not served with any type of dipping sauce.
The Beef and Lamb Confit was tender and tasty served atop a small scoop of a dill and scallion rice. While this was tasty it was not a distinct one. My son said, "Is this corned beef?" And you know what? He was right. It did taste a lot like the type of corned beef I'd find in a chunky hash at Hash House a go-go. But that's for another review.
So now back to the Thracian Clay Pot. It would seem that during the shuffling of waiters for our table, either our waiter put in this order incorrectly or it was given to another table because we didn't get it during the course of them bringing the rest of our order. When we questioned why the long wait, we were told that it takes a while. We didn't get it after an hour after initially ordering and 30 minutes after reordering it. So I can't tell you how melty and delicious it looked and how it would taste, but the table next to us seemed to really enjoy it.
I'm not a vodka drinker so please read the other ratings for their extensive vodka menu.
This still doesn't really warrant the low rating based on the food. Where it really lacked was the overall experience now versus where it was. This place used to have people who knew the food, wasn't afraid to give locals some food they couldn't pronounce and keep true to themselves. Now, there are waitstaff that don't know the product and don't make you feel excited about their food.
If your looking for something new in Vegas and haven't been, your experience will most likely be 4-5 stars. It is not something that you will find anywhere else and that makes it unique. You will not have the displeasure of seeing a restaurant jump the shark.
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