PAVEL I – THE INSTITUTION

Here comes my first report from abroad, which I bet many people are looking forward to reading! Why? Because it’s on Pavel One, the Slovenian seafood restaurant in the bay of Piran that is the favourite haunt of all travelers visiting this beautiful little gem of a city on the shores of the Adriatic. Pavel I also has a twin brother next door called Pavel II. This was necessary, because – even though there are many restaurants on this seaside strip -, nobody would be caught dead in any other place than the two Pavels. You can see it as you walk along: nobody…only a couple of people….nobody….two people…nobody….hundreds of people! Congratulations, you’ve arrived to Pavel I. As to why it became so popular I have no idea. Over the ten years I have been going to Portoroz I have never walked into any other restaurant than the two Pavels. So there is no comparison really. To be very honest I’ve never really felt the urge to go anywhere else either, because it’s such a lively place serving up consistently good food. Oh yes, and it’s close to the bar with the best view on the shore, ideal for an „afterparty”.

I also wanted to review this place because of some doubters who say that wherever you go beside the Adriatic on the Croatian/Slovenian coastline the food is exactly the same from Split to Piran. It all depends on the quality of the ingredients – they say-, because the cooking techniques are exactly the same and not overly sophisticated. To cut a long story short I tend to agree with the doubters because our meal that evening was nothing special save our main course of sea bass. More about that later.

Pavel I looks and feels like any seaside restaurant: a huge outdoor terrace fitting hundreds of covers every evening, laminated menus with bad photos of the dishes and a page full of food that I could recite when prompted woken up any time in the middle of the night: clams with white wine, mussels in tomato sauce, mixed ham, ham with melon, mixed clams, mixed razor clams, ten types of fish cooked with garlic and olive oil. Side dish? Mangold, mangold and maybe some more mangold. Ok, so what’s the trick? There is no trick. It really all depends on the ingredients and how well the garlic and white wine are applied.

We start with a big helping of mixed mussels and clams in a white wine and garlic sauce. The clams are OK, nothing special, but the sauce has a thicker consistency resembling lumps of flour and garlic. Not a winner. Then we move onto the Kraski Prsut, the Slovenian version of prosciutto crudo: thicker slices of cured ham with some gherkins on the side. The gherkins were exceptionally crunchy and pickled and springy in their texture. The ham was quite boring unfortunately. How about the rings of deep fried calamari with tartare sauce? The batter on the calamari was proportioned well, neither too thick or thin and it wasn’t oily or chewy. In fact it was a very nice try at such a typical course and the fresh and springy quality of the calamari made it a good dish. We washed all of this down with a local Saksida Pinot Gris – the one on the picture. Please don’t try this one if you’re ever down there – it cost 14 euros but wasn’t worth 1 if you ask me. The second one called Zelen and belonging to the same Saksida family, but costing us double the price was far better.

We needed a better wine to accompany the highlight of the meal, the freshly caught whole sea bass only grilled with garlic and olive oil. How can one start to describe fish of this quality? It was perfect. Perfect taste, perfect texture, delicious and discreet seasoning. It was so good I wanted to suck the head and the gills clean and then go on methodically to cleaning the fishbones one by one. Unfortunately my friend and colleague Mr. R prevented me from doing so because he also was fast on the draw and devoured a good piece of the fish before I came back to my senses. We also ordered some grilled squid and mangold to accompany the fish. The squid was also superb and we ended up scraping the remains on the huge plate with some home bread even though we were full half way along the dinner with all the starters we ordered. Come to think about it, the good thing about Pavel is that the restaurant welcomes larger groups for whom the large plates filled with spaghetti or greens and seafood are a great way to share and enjoy together. That’s why the atmosphere is also better than in some other places.

At the end of the dinner I have to draw the conclusion that the doubters are right and it all depends on the quality of the seafood and not the chef. Pavel I is just as good as most of the better seafood restaurants around the shore, but not better. If you are looking for some sophistication then this is not the place for you. Neither is it your place if you don’t want to spend 40 euros on a larger piece of fish or 32 on a mixed fish plate. As a footnote I’d like to add that we tried a second fish restaurant in the Portoroz marina the next day and everything was approximately the same – the mussels and the sauce were a bit better while the fish about the same. So don’t go expecting great surprises.

Pavel I
Piran, Slovenia
Overall 6/10

LA BODEGA – ALTERNATIVE TAPAS

I met the owner of La Bodega, Budapest’s newest tapas bar at the wine festival this year. His place is just next to the Alagút, where the infamous and seedy “Best Pub on the Street” (Az utca legjobb kocsmája) used to be. He is an acquaintance of an acquaintance and I was happy to meet him to check what novelties he will be introducing into the city’s tapas scene. I guess we were both a little tipsy when I asked him the following question: ” So what makes your place great? What’s the difference between this and Pata Negra?”. “Only that mine is actually edible” came the self-assured and rather provocative answer. I myself am an avid tapa eater and have pretty OK memories of Pata Negra and appreciate their efforts they make in having a variety of manchego cheese and iberico ham as well as a good and cheap selection of spanish wine. The owner of La Bodega also told me he thinks that the majority of the wine in Tapa Negra are crap.

Needless to say I was immediately intrigued by the place and thought that it would be similar to Moro in London or my favourite little place by the sea in Malaga where you sit on huge oak casks and are served completely random tapas by the waiters as you sit and sip on your fino sherry. So we went there on a lazy lunch break on a Saturday expecting to be dined and wined like juan carlos, the rey de espana. The place was almost completely empty aside from a couple of guys who seemed like regulars in one corner and an absolute drunken playboy sitting next to the bar. Our playboy tried to chat up the very good looking waitress practically all throughout our lunch and the drunker he got, the louder his remarks came drifting towards us. Not a nice experience at all.

The wine selection contrary to our expectations was limited and full of Hungarian brands. Spanish wines I could not see chalked on the board at all. This might also be a Bortársaság outpost, but then why call it the La Bottega tapas bar? The food also fell very very short of the hype with a strange combination of pates and spreads, some skewers and only a few real tapas if you ask me.

We went for the following. A cream of mascarpone and blue cheese which was nothing more and nothing less but a spread, which we put on our OK bread. A good attempt at a chorizo in red wine, where the sausage was tasty and well done with a pretty thin red wine sauce that we weren’t able to dip but also tasted good. A sad attempt at gambas pil pil or gambas al ajillo depending on what it was trying to imitate. A bowl of cold shrimps with an overpowering garlic taste that I could still feel two days later in my mouth, and it was that lingering bad garlic taste that usually comes from garlic powder than the one that stays with you after a helping of freshly cooked or rubbed garlic. It was like the one you can buy canned or stored in olive oil in supermarkets or at any good delicatessen.

The cheese plate arrived straight from Kaisers with a selection of completely dried out mimolette (forgot to take the crust off – never mind), chunks of some mediocre manchego, wafer thin slices of emmenthal or some other cheapo alternative and a herb crusted brie-type of thing. Terrible. And where was the jamon iberico bellotta or the polpo gallego or the mejillones diavolo or whatever? maybe a spanish flan? nope.

Last but not least the skewer arrived, which was made up of pretty dry chicken pieces marinaded in some oriental spices and some fruit chutney on the side. Fruit chutney? In a tapas bar? With some Hungarian Szürkebarát? You gentlemen, have lost the plot.

La Bodega Wine & tapas bar
Next to the Alagút
Overall: 3/10

ARANY KAVIÁR – GOLDEN STANDARD

Arany Kaviar is a Russian themed restaurant celebrating its tenth year in business this year, in Várfok u. just below the castle and close to Oscars. Szása, the head chef says he’s ready to make the leap up to be among the very best in Hungary and he’s doing everything in his power to get there including some training and courses in Michelin restaurants abroad and looking for the top ingredients: from Russkiy Standart vodka J, to the best local duck to giant lobsters from the Bering channel. I can clearly say – after two meals here recently – that the restaurant has arrived and taken its place among the very best.

Today I am with my family and we are celebrating the birthday of a much respected family member: me. After drinking a couple of ice cold vodka shots which arrive in chilled shot glasses we turn our attention to the menu. The food here is an interesting Russian inspired mix of great food, but let that not fool you into thinking all they have is Pelmenyi and Borscht. No, they have all the great soups, like Szcsi and Szoljanka as well as Georgian specialties like Basturma as well as the obligatory Beluga, Keta and Osetra caviars. Our visit coincides with the 10 year old birthday and the launch of the new tasting menus: an anniversary menu and a gourmet menu to supplement the fantastic offers on the main a la carte menu. We decide to give Szása and the cooks a real challenge and order the worst nightmare for the kitchen. I order the 8 course gourmet menu, my father orders the six course anniversary menu, while my wife and mother order a soup and a main course. Completely different dishes, completely different timing, complete chaos. But we’re sticking with our choices.

We start with the welcome treat of some fish paté, butter, garlic butter and home brown and white bread loaves. The bread is the real treat, which looks like a small, flat brown disc. The butter and the paté melts on its warm surface, because it’s recently come out of the oven. I’m already feeling full and I have a momentary panic attack just thinking about the eight courses that will be arriving between now and midnight. The first course arrives for the family: I receive a tasting of caviar, while the others a clear beef broth with mushroom dumplings (varenyiki), the most amazing herring on a bed of pickled cucumbers and a traditional Russian szoljanka with a potato piraschki cap on top. The beef soup is a clear broth, deliciously prepared with the earthy mushroom dumplings. The herring is simply amazing compared to my knowledge of that terrible stinky fish swimming among a pool of onions. It’s light, tasty and the cucumber pickle below it adds a nice touch to one of the top dishes of the night.

My small helping of beluga caviar arrives on a large wrought iron stand filled with goodies: the caviar in the center and beside it soft butter, grated hard boiled egg, finely chopped onions and shallots and sour cream. The idea is to put a bit of sour cream/egg/onion on your soft blini pancake and then the caviar and down it. Of course, the world’s most pricey caviar is great alone and better with all of the additional ingredients as well.

Next came a light salmon filled pelmenyi with keta caviar and sour cream, while prawn filled pelmenyi with parmesan shavings landed to my right. Both were really awesome, but I still remain of the view that nothing can match the taste of the meat pelmenyi with sour cream and small dash of vinegar. I’m also not sure of the Italian spin with the parmesan shavings which took that dish into the ravioli/tortellini arena, but my father seemed to like it a lot.

After a longer break we carry on with the dinner and order up a bottle of Konyári Loliense ’06 to go along with the fishy dishes. I’m now quite positive that all ’06 wine will be great, because every bottle I’ve had sings songs and tells tales of the great weather. Next up is a break for the girls, a soup for my father and a Bering Sea leg of lobster with Cognac and garlic butter sauce, baby courgettes, baby mushrooms and some asparagus. The crab meat is cooked well, but overall it’s just a bite of meat that goes down pretty fast. The best things about the dish are the great, fresh vegetables which remind me of all the great vegetable only dishes that are becoming so fancy nowadays in top restaurants. They can sell a dish on their own really, without the meat or fish „garnish”. My father seems happy with his Szcsi, a sour soup of cabbage and inside a piece of meat the quality of Vienna’s own Plachutta would be proud to serve up. The ladies have another piece of house bread and some remains of dad’s soup while they wait. The kitchen is also having a hard time trying to juggle our strange orders, so while they go about preparing the real thing we are invited to a small treat of pomegranate sorbet or rather pomegranate jelly and pieces with some vanilla ice cream. It’s not really a sorbet but sweet light dessert, but we gulp it down thankfully.

As for the mains… wow. My wife had a pretty bad week leading up to this dinner and the only thing she could eat was boiled potatoes. She wanted something that was kind of light but tasty at the same time. The duck on the menu with a foie gras ragout was a bit too much so she asked to keep the duck rosé with a light ragout other than what was on offer. She received the most delicious duck with a sauce made from sweet, fresh figs.

My course was a three piece ensemble of pink lamb with a great little side dish of aubergine stuffed with goat cheese and adzsika sauce from Georgia. It was so good that I forgot to take pictures of it so all that was left were the thin bones of baby lamb. I accompanied the dish with a really wonderful Gróf Buttler unfiltered Pinot Noir, which was recommended by the sommelier. I looked with envy to my left where to me the best course of the night was arriving: the medallions of veal with foie gras, truffles and a sweet aszú type of reduction all lying on a bed of poppy and pear strudels. The veal pink, the goose liver perfectly cooked, the strudels soft and sweet and the truffles giving a nice earthy but perfumed contrast to the sweet dish. I loved it to bits.

The most forgettable course was the soft goat cheese with blueberry jam… too soft and creamy for my taste and losing much of its goaty taste. We moved on to a Vayi furmint and a Nyakas late harvest for these courses and they served them well. Last but not least was a mixed surprise of desserts – a rich and creamy chocolate mousse, a mascarpone cake, a little Georgian cake with sugary sour cream and I forgot the rest, take a look on the picture attached.

Some words about the service: it has always been attentive and of top quality every time I have visited in the past. Although the restaurant has many Russian and Georgian specialties, I would say that it is rather the roots of the kitchen that point in this direction but the style and quality is of top international caliber. I’m just writing this so that anyone afraid or skeptical about Russian cuisine, but interested in superb food will surely also find Arany Kaviár to his or her liking.

Pricey? Yes. Overpriced? I don’t think so. The six course jubilee menu is 10 000 without the wine, which is a strong bargain of you ask me. It’s much more of a bargain than the other tasting menu, but if you’re into caviar you have to pay the price. The only criticism it gets from me is the decor, which may not be the most sophisticated interior in town with very heavy fabrics and kitschy Russian motifs and golden icons. Also, I fail to see why empty bottles of Moet champagne have to be displayed for the guests to see … like a sign of past golden ages when people could afford that stuff. It simply doesn’t belong there.

Altogether, I wish the restaurant another ten years in business and the struggle for stars to continue. It’s not often you see a talented team, a strong creative spirit, a well-defined vision of where the kitchen is going and great dishes hand in hand.

Arany Kaviár
http://www.aranykaviar.hu/
Overall 8,5/10