Live from Lawrence Ave, it's Bulgarian Restaurant!

Long gleaming bar, dance floor, DJ area with Gigantic speakers, spot lighting and disco music make it impossible not to think of Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin as the Wild and Crazy Czech brothers on SNL. Being Tuesday the music level was surprisingly conversation friendly, and none of the 6-7 tables of diners were dancing, though our waitress assures us come Friday and Saturday it will be Wild and Crazy.

One of three seating areas, BR is a large gleaming new restaurant.


How was the food you ask, I believe I liked it more than Mike G, who had spotted BR using his patented look new awnings technique, and Michael M (EatChicago). In particular I liked the Bear's Footprint, a pork burger filled with cheese, pickles, ham and mushroom.

Bear's Footprint



Mixed was a starter of Dried Cured Meat "Pastarma" w/Bulgarian Cheese "Kashkaval." The cured meat was much like breseola, though had a slight waxy mouthfeel, flavor was improved with a drizzle of olive oil. Kashkaval seemed, as Michael pointed out, straight from the grocer mozzarella.



Faring a bit better was Drained yogurt salad (front) and Chicken Liver "Olympia" (rear). Liver mixed with cheese, mushrooms and scallion, was tasty, but the huge portion soon became daunting.


Last, and least, was Katino Mezi (chicken, pork or beef) Steamed meat w/mushrooms, onions, lutica (a tomato sauce concoction) and wine. We opted for chicken. One of the M's dead-nailed it with "Bulgarian Style Chinese."


Pinot Noir from Macedonia, a 2004 Bovin to be exact, burn that in your 'just say no' memory. Think low quality pinot noir, watery with an acid tang. Kamenitza, Bulgarian pilsner, was quite drinkable, especially in comparison to the Bovin.



Service was friendly and informed, prices reasonable and Bulgarian Restaurant was spotless, gleaming, glistening, including the enormous bathroom. BR must be crowded with hard drinking disco loving Bulgarians on the weekends to invest that much space in the men's bathroom.

By the end of the evening even Mike and Michael were unable to resist the beat of What is Love by Haddaway, made famous by the Roxbury Guys on SNL, and later a movie with Will Ferrell.

Roxbury Guys


Enjoy,
Gary

Restaurant Bulgaria
4724 W Lawrence
Chicago, IL
773-282-0300
www.restaurantbulgariachicago.com

Many of these same delights can be had (in versions almost certainly not much better) at the oddly named Florida restaurant on Lincoln ave. (next to Apart Pizza co.).

kuhdo wrote:Many of these same delights can be had (in versions almost certainly not much better) at the oddly named Florida restaurant on Lincoln ave. (next to Apart Pizza co.).

I believe that Cafe Florida closed a few months ago and quickly morphed into Bowman's Bar & Grill

Restaurant Bulgaria's website proclaims "feel our Bulgarian hospitality," a phrase which to an American raised on movies of the Cold War period cannot help but sound like a threat issued by an oily Kommissar in the opening scenes. In the event the hospitality was pleasant enough but at no risk of overexerting itself, and with the large hall, too-bright lighting and very sparse crowd, Tuesday night at Restaurant Bulgaria had the feel of the off-season at a Baltic resort, with a little bit of the meeting to present the Q3 sales figures thrown in.

I actually thought the food was all right, but it's clearly not the main focus at this sports bar/disco/hookupateria, and not really any more distinctive as Bulgarian food than the burgers and cheese fingers at a sports bar are as cuisine d'Amerique. The dried beef was... interesting, the Bear's Footprint "meatball" (which, as meatballs go, was a bowling rather than a golf one) was probably the best thing, with all the simple virtues of a freshly grilled hunk o' meat. Both the yogurt salad and Katino Mezi suffered by comparison to other things you've had that were similar but had more pizzazz to them-- tzatziki in Greek places (where garlic and lemon adds oomph), dishes like imam biyaldi in Turkish places where the same kind of tomatoey base is sharper and brighter. All in all, the food did little to dispel the impression of so much Eastern European food that you should stick to freshly grilled meats and everything else is kind of bland and basic.

Oh, and the wine? I believe "Bovin" is Bulgarian for "Welch's."

I wouldn't say we took one for the team here, our waitress was engaging, things were edible enough overall, it proved a perfectly reasonable choice for food accompanying ribald stories and rampant rumormongering, but what looked from the outside like a promising and ambitious new window into a distant culture proved to rank about as high on the excitement and new experiences scale as Gridiron Joe's Sports Bar on Route 71.

Edited to correct the wide array of variations on "Restaurant Bulgaria" in the original post.

Man, that's a shame. Good basturma/pasterma is a thing of beauty. Sounds like the one you got came from a package, though.

Yes, I'd say that was an inescapable conclusion by the end, at least it's very hard to imagine meat being cured back in that kitchen.

cilantro wrote:Man, that's a shame. Good basturma/pasterma is a thing of beauty. Sounds like the one you got came from a package, though.

I'd say you're right. This stuff was fine, but far from "a thing of beauty".

As far as the other dishes, my favorite by a longshot were the chicken livers. They were sauteed with mushrooms an green onion and had a pretty tasty jus. The only thing I'd change about this dish is significantly change the ratio of liver to mushroom and onion from about 20:1 to about 2:1. I think somewhere in the neighborhood of three dozen chickens died to give us our appetizer.

Our service was friendly and helpful, but as we kept asking her questions about Bulgarian food, I couldn't shake the feeling that this young Bulgarian woman didn't really like Bulgarian food. Pretty much every request for a recommendation was met with a mixture of surprise and confusion.

They did have a reasonably broad menu, with a lot of little salads, soup, grilled meats, and stewed meats, so if you're hell-bent on exploring Bulgarian cuisine, they could keep you busy for a while. But this place feels more like a nightclub that happens to serve food than like a place that's really trying to exhibit the best of what their cuisine has to offer.

Best,
Michael

I was in Bulgaria in 1980, and I can't remember the food. I remember pork and potatoes (and a reddish sauce) and cucumber soup. And bread that wasn't white and wasn't wheat, but looked dirty (we were raised on sliced white bread that came in square loaves, what did we know). Perhaps Bulgarian food isn't very good.

Reminds me of the old Serbian Club which used to be nearby.

I've seen posts on Serbian and Croatian restaurant but I haven't seen any on Bulgarian restaurants. I went to one recently for my brother's birthday and had a good experience. Its on Lawernce and its called Restaurant Bulgaria:

http://www.restaurantbulgariachicago.com/

I didn't take any pictures but we had a mixed appetizer platter and stuff like kofteta and kebapchi (these are skinless sausages that i think Croatians and Serbians spell with a C instead of K). They also had a smothered steak dish with homemade potato chips which was delicious. The prices are reasonable and they have a full bar. Its worth checking out. Here's the address and phone number:

Restaurant Bulgaria
4724 W. Lawrence Ave.
Chicago, IL 60630

773-282-0300

sorry! i see G Wiv has already made a thread on this place here:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... t=bulgaria

i think its worth checking out

MBK wrote:sorry! i see G Wiv has already made a thread on this place here:

http://lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t= ... t=bulgaria

i think its worth checking out

These posts have been merged.

Thanks for reminding me of this place. While I have spent time in Bulgaria, I have never been to this place.

Regards,