Nouvelle Vague

Nouvelle Vague opened in 2012 as the first bar in the capital to treat mixed drinks as a discipline, building its list on Albanian ingredients: an eau de vie th…Nouvelle Vague opened in 2012 as the first bar in the capital to treat mixed drinks as a discipline, building its list on Albanian ingredients: an eau de vie the team calls blackberry raki sits underneath several of the signatures. The operator describes the place as a morphing concept rather than a fixed room, and the programme bears that out, with a guest-shift series that has brought bartenders from Athens, Florence, Syros, Beirut and Rome to work the counter for a night.

In its most recent placing it stood among the top thirty in the annual worldwide ranking of fifty bars, and sixteenth in the first European edition of the same list, which it reports as a first for any Albanian bar. Expect a queue on weekend nights and a cocktail van that turns up at events around town.