Tirana Sets a New Table

For years the story of Albanian food was told in someone else's accent — Italian, Greek, Ottoman. The new Tirana kitchens are finally telling it in their own. The pantry is astonishing: alpine herbs, wild trout, cheeses from herds that never see a barn.

The mood is confident rather than precious. You eat at a marble counter; the chef pours the wine. The same energy is reshaping the coast — see the awakening of the Albanian Riviera — and it rhymes with what is happening at the best new tables in Paris: less spectacle, more ingredient.

“We are not the next anywhere. We are the first Tirana.”

A chef on the Blloku