Unica Restaurant — Restaurant in Sofia City

What a fantastic restaurant, a gem of a find and this did not come up on any review sites. We luckily passed it on a way to another location and decided to try out some Italian food, and my goodness we were not disappointed.

The restaurant is based on 2 floors, with front and back seating on the 1st floor, while you enter the ground floor a lovely little Italian deli greets you followed by the pizza kitchen.

The menu is very well written with great variety of meals.

Our amuse Bouche was a delicious bread with olive oil and Bulgarian spices!

Starters - Crunchy Saint-Jacques (Scallops) which were prepared with sautéed vegetables and saffron sauce, the scallops were covered in Panko crumbs and cooked to perfection! The veg and sauce brought the dish to new levels and it was a perfect scallop dish.

The second starter Melanzane alla parmigiana was phenomenal and is easily a top 10 dish I have ever had. The burrata foam (which actually worked) was light and delicious the eggplants were perfectly cooked and the Parmesan gave a nice chewy texture to the dish. The basil oils were a clever and delicious addition which really rounded the dish off! Never have I wanted to lick a plate in a restaurant until now! The only suggestion for improvement would be to serve this with a spoon to help lap up the final juices and liquid that remained in the bowl.

For mains we have sea bass with asparagus and Beurre blanc which was again a beautiful looking dish with flavors that matched. Only the arugula oil we found to be too bitter which verged on ruining the dish, it was simply too astringent (causing the mouth to dry out) I wouldn’t be sure was it the oil used or the arugula was just overly bitter to begin. The second main, again a winner was the tortelli with stracciatella with rocket pesto and pecorino cream. A very delicious pasta dish, and the pecorino cream was lovely and thick almost like a melted chesse on top of the pasta.

Of course desert had to be their version of the classic Tiramisu - served dome shaped thanks to a very well aerated mascarpone foam, beneath which lay googy coffee crema, crunchy amaretto and a nice tart/sweetness from cherries (Amarena) - absolutely delicious and a nice light finish to a meal!

The service was wonderful and our waiter was amazing, personable, professional and very warm/Accommodating! He was brilliant to explain dishes and to ensure any allergen request was taken care of. He even sorted out an umbrella for us, as it was raining heavily on our departure!

Over the 8 days we were in Sofia this was easily the best restaurant we dined at, and certainly will return on our next...

Lots to say about this place. For a place trying to clearly deliver a fine dining experience, as most places in Bulgaria, they lack qualities that I expect when you pay 100lev+ per person. First off, we arrive, no hostess to greet us and the waiters send us back to wait for her to come back. Then, the waiters did a great job making sure everyone had their drinks. After that, because they required us to order starters in advance as we were a big group (12 people. Something I find crazy to start), they brought the starters and just put them in the middle of the table without saying anything. This created maximum confusion. So we continued our conversation without touching our food for 5 minutes until the waiters came back and explained which dish is which and gave them to the correct individuals. Then, the service was inconsistent. We were there for 2 hours and at times we had empty glasses for 15 minutes without having a server offering us a new drink and at times, they were terrific. Some waiters were terrific at explaining dishes, offering drinks and providing a terrific service. There was one or two that created some confusion and was difficult to talk to (in Bulgarian). Then, seeing a waiter vape/smoke while working and having some people smoke their electrical cigarettes indoors is crazy. Also having napkin holders on tables is crazy for a fine dining restaurant. It is not a bistro. And for the food, I appreciate the menu and the chef's trying interesting techniques. Great flavors with most dishes. But once again, they had interesting choices. Some dishes were presented beautifully, great job. But for the apple salad, why did it have so much dressing? It felt like we were drinking the dressing at points. For the duck, an interesting choice. It was tasty but it felt like we were eating a duck meat loaf. Not very elegant. And the pickled radish is always a smart choice to have with the duck on the plate (the acid cuts through the fattiness of the duck nicely) but why was it whole? I would expect a julienne cut to work best. The pasta (fussili) was terrific and my favorite dish. Desserts were nice as well. That is enough I guess. Decent experience but still a lot of short comings. I have yet to find a proper fine dining experience in Bulgaria. It meets the "Bulgarian fine dining"...

I ordered Melanzane alla Parmigiana to go. No asterisks, no fine print — just a name hiding what turned out to be the culinary equivalent of a failed science project.

What I received was a dry, dark, dense block, like a leftover slab of homemade pastry that had been overbaked, refrigerated for days, and reheated into oblivion. The top layer was a scorched Parmesan crust — so tough it felt like it had to be cut with a power tool. Not just hiding the taste — sealing it shut.

Beneath that: eggplant, arranged like a list of bad decisions. Unpeeled, thinly sliced, dry, and texturally lifeless. No juiciness, no softness, no aroma. The tomato sauce had been reduced beyond recognition — a bitter, concentrated paste, stripped of any freshness or depth. Imagine the remains of an old Imam Bayildi tray abandoned in a catering school fridge, waiting to be thrown out.

Then came the grand finale: a generous squirt of “mozzarella espuma” — a foamed substance made by spraying mozzarella dissolved in cream from a siphon. In theory. In reality, it looked and tasted like industrial non-dairy cooking cream, frothed to disguise that there was absolutely nothing underneath worth covering.

The menu claimed 250 grams. Maybe if the thing were made of compressed tungsten. Or if they were weighing the emotional damage.

Nothing about this was “alla”, nor “Parmigiana”. Just a dry, burnt mockery of a classic. No warning. No taste. No respect — for the dish, the customer, or the word “kitchen”.

I wasn’t even given a fork. I bit into it directly, out of sheer irritation. Seconds later, it went where it clearly belonged — the trash.

No photo. Nothing worth showing.

I also ordered a pizza, but it’s not worth mentioning. Let’s just say it belongs in the same shameful category as the “Burrata”...