Eat

Opening an Italian place right next to Basilico and further down the street from Margarita, would seem like a tough sell. Yet, Ponte Vecchio, a restaurant that opened last Christmas on the Fehmi Agani street, is doing just that. A tiny but intimate space, the eatery has a simple and straightforward concept that not many could argue against: an exclusive menu of pasta and pizza. Although this limits variety, it seems as an honest venture in a town where most restaurants offer Italian, Mexican, even Asian dishes, that taste, well, the same.

Inside, the small bistro can only accommodate around a dozen of diners at a time, and while we were there only three of the tables were occupied. A large wall-poster of the Ponte Vecchio bridge in Florence adorns one of the main walls, while the open kitchen behind the bar, allows for the delicious smells to waft through the entire cozy restaurant. Upon arriving around 8 pm, we discovered the place is geared mainly toward lunch. In addition to its low prices — everything costs less than 5 euros — a blackboard showing the daily special menu, which had been already wiped clean by the time we got there, offers additional dishes. Our server, a polite middle-aged woman who explained that they’d run out of most of their specials, made us feel immediately at home. We scoured their brief regular menu, which covers your favorite pasta offerings including aglio, olio e peperoncino, spaghetti frutti di mare, lasagne, and traditional pizza combinations that at a first glance piqued no interest. With no choice of salad or some other entree, we immediately jumped to our main course, ordering the only daily special that they had left -tortellini with spinach and ricotta- and their staple pizza (picë e shpisë).

The highlight wasn’t the tortellinis, which were a bit stale (presumably, because they were originally planned as a lunch special), but were okay once washed down by the house white wine – a lightly aromatic and fruity pinot grigio that we’ll be going back for. On the other hand, the pizza is definitely worth a trip to this place, and serves as proof that Ponte Vecchio has something different to offer to the lively neighborhood. The thin-crust alone, immediately distinguishes Ponte’s take from favorite spots like Margarita, whose pizza is cheesy, heavy and often tastes like a pogaqe with toppings. If typically the house’s pizza in Kosovar pizzerias is the heaviest on the menu (usually containing both prosciutto and suxhuk), Ponte has managed to keep it light with a thin layer cheese, a drizzle of mushrooms, well smoked prosciutto (and that is really a feat!) and most surprisingly, instead of suxhuk, it was topped with actual pepperoni. Now, we’re more of an arugula & cherry tomatoes pizza kind of folks, so we can imagine how our enthusiasm for it’s lightness might not be shared by a local (or, well all those used to local food), who might consider this pizza merely as an appetizer. Yet, filling and delicious it was, and at the low price of four euros, it’s a steal. Granted, Napoli’s status as the pizzeria has yet to be challenged by this quaint and modest bistro.

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