Tirana Cafe

Seriously? This is an actual restaurant? Because you aren’t allowed in, and the blinds are all drawn. Hoards if perverted men sit outside and gawk at women while chain smoking. Wth is with this place? Shut it down and make room for a real eatery. This place Is ridiculous. If you are walking by, you can’t help but to forced into inhaling cancerous second hand smoke. Disgusting.

This seems to be basically an Albanian social club which has decided to open its doors to the public, as well. The day I stopped in with a girlfriend (we were waiting for Regeneration, across the street, to open up on a Sunday, and decided to grab a coffee her while we waited), every outdoor table was full, and 90 percent of tables inside were also taken, lots of them with old guys playing dominoes, some with guys reading the paper, or having fairly animated discussions in Albanian, and most of them smoking. Yeah, it is a blue haze in there. The only women present (aside from us) were a young woman at an outside table with her male friend, and the woman behind the bar, a 60s-​ish matronly type who greeted us pretty warmly, offered to make us caramel lattes (we really just wanted coffee, but she was sooo persuasive!) and the tab was pretty cheap, maybe $ 3 for both? The menfolk didn’t seem DELIGHTED with us American chicks crashing their party, but they were reserved in their disapproval, and it was overall kind of fun.

Oy. After picking up my glasses in the area, I was hungry. I saw a sign saying «Tirana,» and was looking forward to having some Albanian food. I walked in, all of the lights were off, the doors were all open. The restaurant was empty except for 4 young guys SMOKING at a table. Jesus. I walked up to the counter and asked what kinds of pastry they had (Pastry was listed on their sign, after all). «We don’t have pastry anymore,» the clerk said. What a disaster of an operation.