Lunch at Vlora

[pasuga]

I had a goodbye lunch with a co-worker at Vlora today.

I hope this place gets a following before it goes the way of all the last incarnations in the space.

Two of us had an excellent and beautifully colorful Greek salad, with a side of fries, and the other ordered the ham and cheese lavash sandwich.. We all thought the food was great, service was attentive. The fries were maybe the best I've had in Boston, ever.

The entree side of the menu for lunch is pricey, but if you stick to the salad/sandwich side it's normal for a lunch in the area. And the decor is beautiful, would be a good place for a business lunch.

[BarmyFotheringayPhipps]

I wonder how much of the deadness is due to the infamous New Year's Eve criminal behavior and the subsequent temporary shutdown. Lord knows it's made me not really want to check the place out.

[C. Hamster]

I agree. I'll never go there after what happened.

[Dr.Jimbob]

It was pretty tame on a Saturday afternoon at 1:30 pm. The manager walked up and said hello in the midst of it also. I can't imagine that an afternoon appearance is going to involve taking your life into your own hands. I also think that signage is a major problem -- what exactly is a Vlora?

[Food4Thought]

If I'm not mistaken, I think it is the Americanized spelling of the city in Albania, which might make sense as they bill themselves as a Northern Mediterranean cuisine influenced by Southern Italy, Greece and Albania

[Allstonian]

Yes, Vlora is the chef/owner's home town in Albania.

[MC Slim JB]

The location and neighborhood-association-imposed lack of signage is an ongoing problem for that space. I used to lunch regularly at Vlora's predecessor (Korean/Japanese restaurant Friends) when I worked nearby, and colleagues who had worked in the neighborhood for years didn't know that place existed, though they probably walked past it every day.

[pasuga]

I really doubt it's due to New Year's Eve. I work a block down Boylston from Vlora. I've mentioned the restaurant to several co-workers, none of them had any idea the place was there, although it's been open for several weeks. And a friend whose husband works for the Back Bay restaurant group hadn't heard a thing about the New Year's Eve incident, in fact didn't know the restaurant existed.

As MC Slim said, the location isn't obvious from the street, and can't be advertised easily.

Thanks Dr. Jimbob, you sampled a lot of things I wanted to try.

[C. Hamster]

Maybe we work in the same place, as no one I work with has heard of it either.

That's always been a doomed space, except long ago when it was the deli and the upscale chinese (mr. somethingorothers). I recall those places having signage though.

[Dr.Jimbob]

My chorus had an extended rehearsal yesterday in the Back Bay, and I dragged a group of six out to Vlora for lunch. The place was empty; we were the only people there at lunch on a Saturday. They've got to come up with better signage, not least something explaining what Vlora is, since it isn't intuitively obvious from the restaurant's name.

The bread handed out at the start was pretty wonderful -- crusty, sourdough-ish in texture, and very tasty, paired with olive oil zinged with a touch of lemon. We didn't do any drinking, since we still had singing to do, but I can vouch for the coffee. It's Lavazza coffee, and they put on a fresh pot which was brewed to perfection.

We split a pair of appetizers: had to try to fork tender grilled octopus given the buzz that I've seen, and it didn't disappoint: the dish lived up to its name, served up on a tomato and cucumber salad and cooked to perfection. I might have liked a bit more lemon or garlic, but very tasty and nicely caramelized exterior. The other thing was the "Albanian Tava" which is a mix of big chunky vegetables tossed into a casserole, topped with cheese and broiled. It was awfully good, and one of the diners wound up getting another one of these as her entree.

The mains were a little more uneven. One person had the ciabatta (mortadella and baby arugula on ciabatta bread), which he pronounced to be wonderful. Another diner had the vegetarian wrap, and both came with what I agree to be some of the finest French fries that I've had in Boston -- perfectly crisped on the outside, nicely tender on the inside.

One diner had baked stuffed clams, which were quite generous indeed -- five or six goodly sized clams, each with a full clam's worth of meat and a breading generously spiked with crab meat. Beautifully and tastily done. My main course, the vlora potato gnocchi, were a bit more of a disappointment. The sauce was a fairly nondescript Italian red sauce of kalamata olives, tomatoes and onions, which was OK enough. The gnocchi were supposed to be pan fried, and came out a little soggy, with neither the crispness I would expect from pan fried gnocchi nor the pillow soft tenderness that I've grown addicted to from the likes of Butcher Shop and Grotto.

Which then ties into a curious thing about the service. We were the only diners in the restaurant, but the main courses took an uncommonly long time to come out. Not sure what happened here, and I wonder if my gnocchi came up short because they had to sit and wait while someone else's dish was being cooked.

All in all, though, eminently civilized eating, ranging from passable to extremely good, and quite reasonably priced. The menu is sort of Greek diner-ish, unfortunately at the moment with more diner than Greek to my taste, but I'll definitely be back to investigate further.

[opinionatedchef]

As a sister lover of ethereal gnocchi, i highly recommend those at Union Bar and Grill on Washington St. 9 times out of 10 they are perfection.