Tirana Fine dining

Tirana's fine dining is young and mostly rests on one idea: cook Albanian ingredients seriously rather than import a French template. That means mountain cheeses, wild greens, river trout, lamb and stone-ground flour, arranged into tasting menus and short seasonal lists.

Almost all of it sits in Blloku or the few streets around it, in small rooms of thirty or forty covers where booking a day ahead is sensible at weekends. Wine lists lean on Albanian producers from Berat, Korca and the Shkodra hills, with Italian bottles behind them. Prices are a fraction of the equivalent in western Europe.