Martin Dimitrov is a Sofia-based art director and graphic designer, there since fifth grade. Growing up in Montana, he made signature images for his gaming forum profiles. First in Paint, then in Photoshop with YouTube tutorials. At university he studied design, but the skills, he says, came from the family PC. In 11th grade he emailed CSKA Sofia a set of designs. Three months later, one turned up on the stadium screen during a televised match. It was stretched out of shape, and he offered to redo it for free. Since then he has designed four home jerseys and much of the club's graphics. Film photography he keeps for himself, having already turned one pleasure into a job.
Martin found DANA through a close friend, back when they both lived in Lozenets. He often came for lunch or dinner, whichever the day called for. The food and the staff kept bringing him back. He also remembers a D'Angelo listening night, the room full of people talking through the album song by song.
The idea behind DANA is flavors from near and far. To me the far ones kept tasting close to home. Dishes I hadn't had before, that still reminded me of my grandma's cooking.
Matbucha opened the meal, a North African dip of tomatoes, peppers, garlic and parsley. All three of us, our waitress included, joked that it resembled lyutenitsa, and the ingredients mostly agree. It was more sour, and chunkier than the chunkiest lyutenitsa I've eaten. It still spread easily over the warm loaf with olive oil and spices, and ate just as well off a fork. Every plate but the dessert came finished with parsley, starting here.
Our waitress picked the chicken tagine, and I couldn't stop eating it. Tender and aromatic, in a saffron sauce with roasted lemon and green olives. Mashed potato came plated around the chicken, so every forkful brought up meat, purée and sauce together.
Martin ordered his favorite. On the menu it's bavno i slavno, slow and glorious, a name he gave up translating at the table. Marinated beef, cooked four to five hours over a low fire, pulled and served over roasted sweet potato and vegetables with chimichurri. You could taste the hours, deep and savory. Underneath, the sweet potato had baked to a crust at the skin. The one crunch on a plate of soft things. I was in love with it.
Dessert changes, and the menu only tells you to ask what DANA has made. Ours was katmer, a Turkish pastry, here made with phyllo, mascarpone and pistachio, vanilla ice cream on top and dried rose petals over everything. The petals were a good call, a floral note over all that cream. Full as we were, Martin had a Bulgarian saying ready. Dessert doesn't go to the stomach, it goes to the soul.
Orange runs up the walls against a floor of pale, irregular stone. Wine bottles line the counter in a row, a low wall between the tables and the open kitchen. Milky glass lamps hang overhead, and the far side is all window. For Martin the space is personal and private, though not in a snobby way.
behind the door
Dani grew up in restaurants with her siblings. An earlier family place, Dani's, was named after her, and this one carries her sister's name. She studied in the Netherlands and worked service at another restaurant. What stayed with her was how a community forms, inside the team and out in the neighborhood. Around regulars, their habits and the friendships that grow from them. DANA opened in March 2025 on that idea. On some days she runs the kitchen herself. Her family's roots are North African, and most of the menu is food they ate at home as kids. It changes with the season. When we visited in late September, they were moving from seafood toward pumpkin and sweet potato. Her father designed the room. Next door, they plan an event space with a fixed schedule. Ingredients come from the Arab shops around Zhenski Pazar, or back from trips. Some of the za'atar came from Amsterdam, a gift from a friend from Beirut.
