Shëtitorja Spile 5 · Himarë · Albania

Wood fire
on the
promenade

The covered terrace at Enigma: a cream retractable awning on dark battens, white tables and black slatted chairs, white slat screens hung with trailing greenery, and the painted board overhead

A masonry dome with the fire burning inside it, a terrace under a cream awning, and the Ionian a few paces across the paving. The board over the tables reads Restaurant and Pizzeri, and the kitchen means both.

DirectionsThe oven
The oven at Enigma: a rendered masonry dome with its arch and band painted deep red, a pizza standing on a round metal tray at the mouth, and the fire burning inside the chamber to the right of it
The mouth of the oven, its arch and band painted deep red. The fire sits to one side of the chamber; a pizza stands on a metal tray at the mouth.

The second word on the board

Pizzeri

Not a deck, not a conveyor — a rendered masonry dome built into the kitchen wall, fired with wood. The fire burns in the same chamber as the food, and it is why the crust comes out thin, crisp and quick rather than soft and slow.

Toppings go on generously, and the sea gets onto them: this is a seafront kitchen and it cooks like one.

What comes off it

The first word on the board

Restaurant

A pizzeria that stops at pizza would only need one word. This one has two, and the second one is doing work: pasta, salads, fish and seafood come out of the same kitchen, plated with more care than a promenade address would lead anyone to expect.

The wine follows the cooking home. Italian bottles, named by their appellation rather than by their colour.

A plate out of the Enigma kitchen: a whole prawn over squid and mussel in a nest of ribboned carrot, with radish and pink grapefruit cut thin and a yellow oil pooled on the plate
Prawn over squid and mussel, in a nest of ribboned carrot, with radish and pink grapefruit.

The name over the tables

Enigma

The board is a panel of bare boards joined edge to edge, hung on two wires off the awning frame and lettered by hand — spaced capitals over a brush script, dark reddish brown on the wood. Below it the terrace runs back under a cream awning on dark battens, walled on two sides by white slat screens hung with trailing green.

The venue's hand-painted board, hung on wires from the awning frame: ENIGMA in spaced capitals above Restaurant and Pizzeri in a brush script, dark reddish brown on bare boards

4.5 / 5

on Tripadvisor

4.2 / 5

on Google

Open daily from nine in the morning until late.

Spile bay at Himarë — the water, the town beach and the ridge behind the town the restaurant stands in, not the restaurant

Spile bay at Himarë — the town the terrace stands in, not the terrace.

Enigma sits at number 5 on Shëtitorja Spile, the pedestrian seafront that runs the length ofthe town beach. Everything else in Himarë — the castle village on the ridge, the coves north and south — is reached from the same paving.

Finding it

On the promenade

Shëtitorja Spile 5, Himarë

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