Lui Potam

Potami Beach · Himarë

Seafood, and what
comes with it

A table mid-meal seen from directly above: a grilled fish over grilled vegetables, linguine with prawns in tomato sauce, a plate of grilled prawns with lemon and a part-eaten plate of whipped cheese, on paper over the cloth

Off the grill, whole

The restaurant describes itself in two words — fresh seafood, Mediterranean — and that is an accurate description of the table above. A grilled fish laid over grilled courgette, pepper and leaves. Linguine with prawns in tomato sauce. A plate of grilled prawns with lemon. A plate of whipped cheese under two halves of a tomato. Paper over the cloth, and bread.

Nothing here is a tasting menu and nothing arrives under a cloche. What the kitchen is good at is the thing that is hardest to fake on a coast — fish that was in the water recently, cooked plainly, and brought out while it is still too hot to touch.

Ask what came in that morning. It is the one question worth asking in any restaurant on this shore, and it is the reason to phone before you walk down rather than after.

A plate of fanned apple, orange and banana beside a tall stemmed glass of an iced drink with a sprig of mint in it, on a pale timber table

How it ends

Fruit, fanned, and the rest of the afternoon

Apple, orange and banana cut and fanned onto a plate, and a tall glass of something iced still going, a sprig of mint in it. It is how a long lunch on this coast finishes, and it is a fair signal of what the place is for: nobody is turning the table.

Call to book a tableGetting there