Malkiyat Stadion

Goro found Malkiyat Stadion on his own after moving back from Berlin. Back then he lived around the corner. There's no English on the menu or on the floor. When one of his Zabranena Muzika sessions was filmed here, plates from this same kitchen went around while he played. Clips from it are how a lot of people discovered him, Boiler Room included. It was packed when we arrived on a Tuesday night. The crowd was older. Couples, old friends, big groups pushed together, and rakia on every table. Goro calls them the intellectual old folks of Sofia. The talk around us ran to politics, music, and at one table to French cinema from the seventies. Goro had a rule for the meal. Whatever arrived, he called it meze, something to eat alongside rakia. He ordered two plates without opening the menu. The first was shopska salad. Easy to make and easy to get wrong, because it lives or dies on the tomatoes. These were right. The second, chicken hearts in butter, was a split decision. A bit overcooked, a little gummy. Butter and seasoning made them aromatic, so nothing tasted of offal. Zelevi sarmi, cabbage rolls stuffed with mince and rice, came homemade. The filling was cooked through, and the leaf kept a slight crunch. Kebapcheta were nicely charred. By Goro's account, the best he has had here. Spoonfuls of lyutenitsa sat beside them. Bob s nadenitsa won the table for me. Bulgarian beans usually come one of two ways, as a thin soup or as yahniya, a thick stew. I'm a yahniya person, and that's what was served. Creamy, full of flavor on its own, with slices of nadenitsa, a pork sausage, for bite. We sat out in the courtyard garden. Inside is a krachma of the old kind, the Bulgarian tavern, smoky and worn. Wooden boards cover the floor and climb partway up the walls, with textured wallpaper above. Old calendars, photos and drawings cover it, next to TVs playing dubbed soap operas. Some tables have benches instead of chairs, and all of them wear mushama, a wipe-clean oilcloth. When we asked for the bill, one of the women working the floor added it up by hand.