The food that surprised me most in Albania

I didn't go into Albania with high culinary expectations, I have to admit — it's a destination that sells itself mostly on its beaches, and I assumed the food would be a bonus rather than a reason to go. Between fresh seafood, genuinely good Balkan cooking and mussels pulled straight out of the sea, I was completely wrong.

The first thing that surprised us was the quality of the seafood in Sarande: at Observatory Restaurant, with views over the Ionian Sea and Corfu in the background, we had fish so fresh it made any elaborate preparation unnecessary — salt, lemon, and little else, and it tasted better than most elaborate dishes I've had at far more expensive restaurants.

Then there was The Mussel House, in Ksamil, specializing in mussels, with the option to take a boat trip to the actual farms where they're raised before you eat them. One of those places that sounds like a tourist trap by the name and turns out to be exactly the opposite — we went in skeptical and left planning to come back another day.

In Tirana, traditional Albanian cooking at Oda, especially their tavë kosi (baked lamb with yogurt), made us realize the country has a real culinary identity of its own, beyond the obvious Mediterranean influence you expect before going.

In Albania, eating well doesn't depend so much on spending a lot as on being near the sea and letting locals point you in the right direction — something we learned through trial and error.

What surprised me most, in short, was how little we had to search to eat well throughout the whole trip — and how cheap it turns out, compared to any similar Mediterranean destination I know.