Cafe Remi

Faceless shopping centers are known to serve up quick take-out devoid of the signature flare of whatever native cuisine being represented. But if you go beyond the windows’ glare at Café Remi, you’ll find something that runs much deeper.

House baked bread with chunky marinara drops before us, the closest we’ll come to Remi’s deep Italian menu - as a backdrop, flames flicker from the wood burning oven where asiago, rosemary, gruyere, chevre, and sun dried tomatoes are often put to artisanal pie.

“To Albania!” our selections decry, eager as we are to sample the offerings from Remi Cakolla’s homeland (a shared passion for Italian cuisine - along with Albanian cuisine’s low profile - with his wife Laura led to the menu’s diversity).

“The seasonings, and it’s a much denser patty,” our waiter says after dropping off the pliskavica (Albanian burgers). Sheltered in focaccia given a slight, cushiony underpinning and light coat of oil, I’m ambivalent towards the differences between this burger patty and its more evolved, particularly grass fed varieties. The saving grace are the spices, the oily provolone, and the capers and sautéed red peppers that match up so well with the bread’s crisp top. Roasted potatoes blessed by fresh rosemary and given an appropriate cast of extra virgin olive oil fill out the plate.

Rather than the expected reflecting pool bowl, the Albanian goulash comes served atop a gleaming white dish, most of which is negated by the incandescent reddish, orange tinged broth, a velvety richness for which I take to with repurposed pieces of the aforementioned hamburger ‘bun.’

Just as quibbling begins to take form in my mind - where’s the paprika, the sharp spice notes I’m used to in a goulash - a lazy swipe of my fork moves through a beautiful chunk of braised beef like a katana, the beefy course of these jutting islands leading me to creamy, brilliantly whipped mashed potatoes infused with the flavor of their sautéed fresh spinach and garlic foundation.  

The burek, or Albanian pitas, are again not exactly what I expected. Examples of everyday street food back home, the quality of the dough is what separates it from stuffed dough pockets stateside.

Delicate phyllo made onsite is oven baked and given a flaky, chrysalis coating, the layers running moister, denser as you get to the interior, the short doughy rods perfect for anyone’s kung-fu grip. We went with an adequate beef onion mix that would have benefited from more spice; the spinach and sour cream, however, was spot on, with the creamy mix matching perfectly with the crisp, yet oily dough.

This last facet, of course, was the only major downside - well that and the fact that they abandoned the leek and sour cream filling due to its failure to catch on. But like Filipino lumpia, there isn’t much to do besides a few quick presses with a napkin when no one else is looking. Who’d want that hull-like presentation ruined before it even left the kitchen? 

336 York Rd. Warminster, PA 18974. 215-675-1062. cafe-remi.com.