02 — Coffee & cake

Sweets on blue-rimmed plates, at the wall

The plates are the only thing here anyone chose a colour for: a mottled cobalt rim around a speckled cream field, and the same plate under both sweets.

Trileçe

Milk cake, and a sheet of set caramel

Trileçe is the sweet the whole coast makes, and this one arrives cold and cut square, the caramel gone almost to glass across the top and the sponge underneath still heavy with milk.

It arrives on that plate with two spoons laid across the edge of it, one from either side.

A square of caramel-topped milk cake on a blue-rimmed speckled plate with two spoons, on a bare timber table, the stone parapet and the terrace out of focus behind — Trileçe, on the timber table

A round golden syrup-soaked cake in a pale sauce on a blue-rimmed speckled plate, a fork and a knife laid on either side of it, on a white round table — A second sweet, set for two

The sheet

Set twice, English then Albanian

The card on the table is laid out in three ruled columns with a butterfly at each end of its heading. It says everything twice over — the English line, then the Albanian — and then it says what it costs.

That pairing is where this site takes its own register, and every Albanian word on it is the café's rather than ours.

There are forty-odd more places to eat down in the town, and the guide to Himarë keeps the list of them.