Talegas

Intended as a vegetarian lunch restaurant with vegan options. Open since a couple of years,. Same owner as meat serving restaurant Lomo next door, which opens for dinner. Used to be a bar.

The first thing to mention is that they have fluctuating opening hours. Call first. Best time to just try is 1 - 3 P.M, not in the morning.

Best place to eat in Sofia and one of the restaurants I have liked the most, ever. You can get some of the best tastes of the vegetarian (and vegan obviously) kitchen here. The owner is something like the third or fourth generation working in food-service. Very opinionated and with lots of ideas, just as is usually the case in the ultra-talented. He's sometimes accessible to discuss many interesting subjects, not only food.

The easiest way for me to describe the food is by drawing a parallel to Miles Davis' decision to include the Fender Rhodes electrical piano in his group because it, as a single instrument, gave the effect of the whole orchestra he had played with when recording with Gil Evans.

Carlos' food is to luxury food as Miles' Rhodes player was to Gil Evans' orchestral arrangements. It's simple and fundamentally satisfying, but at the same time the perfect, most incredible luxury restaurant experience.

The location is one of Sofia's most upscale areas. The restaurant/shop itself looks very nice. The interior design is stylistically pure. You eat in a bar, at a bar counter's height sitting in a bar chair (which I personally love), with a fair and acceptable distance to other guests. Very high attention to detail; I couldn't go into everything, as I probably haven't even been aware of everything.

I would eat at Talegas every chance I can. Very few restaurants I've been to in my life live up to the experience. Bear in mind that my parents are health freaks and brought me up on vegetarian food, so that I've been visiting vegetarian restaurants in different countries since the 80s. What Carlos does lives up to the best in this category (even if he's not exclusively committed to vegetarian or vegan food - see Lomo).

I will have to mention that there is a dog present most of the time in case you're allergic. Another thing is that meat is cooked in the same kitchen, i.e. the kitchen of Lomo and Talegas is the same, as I know some would take issue with that.

Also a shop, check website for stock.



Updated from previous review on 2017-03-19