Restorant Piazza — Restaurant in Bashkia Durrës

Reviewing this place is not exactly easy.

The staff was nice, but only pretty much to average standards. Not an especially high service level. Not at all really.

The food was a mixed bag.

I ordered the sea urchins, seafood salad and the grilled squid, octopus and shrimps. With it, I was given three slices of bread. Had a bottle it water and bought two glasses of the house white {Albanian, white).

The sea urchins were lovely, but as it was my first time tasting such, I can't compare.

The seafood salad was tasting fairly plain. The squid (in the salad), albeit chewy as squids tend to be, lacked any real strong flavour. The same can be said for most of the rest of the salad and the small shrimps in it didn't seem fresh. I have a high suspicion that they had recently been frozen, as they were watery, lacked any bite and seemed smushy. I even found a small piece of plastic in the salad.

The salad was served with lemon aioli on the side (ok, could use more garlic) and a beetroot dressing, which was an incredibly interesting choice, as it's earthy sweetness and sourness really complimented the seafood.

My main, the grilled seafood, was a bit underwhelming. The shrimps were fine. Nothing special. The octopus was very tasty and the squid, again, lacked flavour (and could perhaps done well with a few more seconds on the grill). However, what really shook me about the dish was that it was served with mustard. Now, I've never heard of Italians (for it styles itself as an Italian restaurant) serving fhsg with mustard. And I understand why. It really didn't work.

The wine was a bit bland, but cheap and at least not too sweet.

The bread fulfilled its intended role.

The price for all this was 3500 (Ca. 31 euros) ,which is a lot for a dinner in Albania, but also not ludicrously expensive - and quite nice by other European standards.

Overall, my experience with the food was average.

What in the end was a deciding factor in choosing between 3 or 4 stars was that the restaurant gave me a fruit and ice desert on the house. That level of service just slightly tipped the balance in their favour.

However, don't go in expecting to be blown away.

Or maybe I just ordered the...

We went there based on the recommendations from the Internet, however: The service was ok - our waiter didn't really speak English and the whole service seemed a bit aloof and made us feel like we don't belong there. My husband ordered vegetable soup, and it had meat in it as well as crab pasta, which came with 4 crabs looking at him. He was presented with tools to get the meat out of the crabs himself. That was just poor presentation. The pasta and tomato sauce were nice, but anybody would be put off by dismantling the crabs themselves. I ordered sea orchins, which were nice, and soul fish for my main. There was no side dishes on the menu, so I assumed it will come with something. Nope, I was just given 3 flat fish battered and in lemon sauce. You can smoke in the restaurant as well, which after having spent over a week in Albania, must say is unusual. No other restaurants had that option. When it came to paying, I paid by card but the waiter took my card out of my hand without showing me how much is on the terminal and touched the card himself. Also afyer having eaten and drunk in many restaurants and bars in Albania never had it before. Any other restaurants waiters showed me the amount I was paying and ask me to touch my card myself. This was by far the most expensive meal in Albania and biggest let down. The food itself was not bad, just confused. Save your money, it's...

This was recommended to us by a Durres local, who told us it had the best seafood in town. The service was slow and snobby, and the waiter didn't speak any English or even try to understand (even though their menu also has English). The prices were OK for a higher end restaurant. We ordered a Greek salad (fine, but nothing special), octopus salad (excellent - the highlight of the meal). My husband had grilled sea bass (tasty but a little bony), and I ordered fish fillet with olives (fileto peshku me ullinj) - I tried to find out what Kind of fish, but the waiter wouldn't/couldn't tell me. I received some kind of fish covered in tomato sauce (like pasta sauce). It was fine, but clearly not what I ordered. I just couldn't be bothered to try to send it back (the fish with olives was on the bill, so there was no miscommunication when ordering). On the plus side, the view of the Venetian tower is nice, and they gave us complimentary mussels (tasty) and fruit for dessert....