Montenegro...a part of the world overlooked by most on this site (and certainly by most Americans) if the traffic on the Montenegro forum is any thing to judge by. So I am posting this here to hopefully spur interest and appreciation for this place.
This evening we bundled into our Dacia StepWay rental car and headed to the small downtown center of Bar Montenegro for dinner. We picked a restaurant that turned out to be a more upscale place than we had expected but still casual and not stuffy.
The Knjazeva Basta restaurant in Bar is set in a park that runs along the waterfront and also contains the palace of King Nicola. Surrounded by towering trees, grass and flowers you can dine in the garden or inside, we chose the garden on this warm balmy night. We had a great time. The service was impeccable, formal but not stuffy and the food was excellent.
Now we had been in France and Italy for two months already and had plenty of good food at varying price levels. But tonight was an eye opener. My friend Mary and I both ordered steak...we’d had so much seafood lately here on the coast of Italy’s Adriatic that we craved some beef.
We started with an appetizer of Bruschetta that was better than any we had in Italy. But before that the waiter brought us a small amuse bouche of chicken pate and some wonderful bread on the house.. We ordered a bottle of Montenegrin red wine and our steaks....expecting to get rather thin and small pieces of meat we were very surprised when we each got a Filet Mignon the size of my fist, mine came with grilled vegetables and potato and Mary’s with Risoto. They were done perfectly.
We savored our main course and finished our wine when the waiter brought a plate of fresh fruit on the house. I ordered coffee and told him to pick something out for us from the many choices. He brought me a Turkish style coffee topped with just a hint of cinnamon and Mary an iced coffee layered with a scoop of ice cream in the middle.
This very good meal for two people came to the total of 61 Euros. The main courses were less than the wine at 14.90 Euros each. But the wine was only 18. This was a great deal. All served in a beautiful garden with cool jazz as the soundtrack and friendly impeccable service.
And even though we have been here a very short time this has been our experience so far. Montenegro is a bargain, a beautiful place with friendly helpful folks many of whom speak flawless English but appreciate my attempts to speak their language.
Here in Bar the mountains fall down right to the seashore from impossible heights, jagged granite peaks covered up to a point in a mixture of evergreen and olive and deciduous forest they dominate the landscape all around. Bar itself is tidy, neat and clean with a lively cafe scene and very cheap beer compared to the “other” Europe. A large draft beer at lunch set me back all of 1.50 Euro.
So this is an economical part of Europe, a very friendly part. People have offered to help us at the car wash and the grocery store and seem very glad you are here. We are very glad we came...and sad that we are more or less just passing through. Tomorrow we head off to Dubrovnik and then to Visegrad and we return here in a week. But this place deserves more.
Check it out if you can...add it on to your itinerary...you wont regret it.