Having eaten traditional Serbian food at “Brankovina”:https://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/review?id=197479 on our first night in Belgrade, Italian seemed a good option. We’d both independently seen “Trattoria Campania”:http://trattoriacampania.com/?lang=en in our guidebook, which seemed a straightforward, short walk from our hotel, the “Majestic.”:https://www.silvertraveladvisor.com/review/accommodation/197418-review-hotel-majestic However, we’d not bargained for the amount of redevelopment in Belgrade and it took us a while to find the restaurant but as we never like to be beaten, we persevered.
The restaurant is in an old building near to Saborna Church and Princess Ljubica’s mansion. At 7.30pm, it was busy, and on entering and asking for a table for two, we noted a silent look between the staff which was probably, ‘where are we going to fit them’ and ‘oh my god, they’re British, who speaks the best English’. However, a table was found for us, in a small slightly raised private area with just one couple already seated and a reserved table for four.
The extensive menu was fortunately in both Cyrillic and Latin alphabets and had the usual Italian favourites. As our guidebook suggested this was the place for genuine Italian Pizza and, having seen the wood-burning oven, it seemed like a good choice. However, spied the size of the pizzas, we decided to share a Diavolo with a green salad.
Ordering the pizza was simple, but the salad was slightly more problematic, possibly because the waitress thought a green salad was a little boring. We were also going to order a carafe of white wine, but the waitress kept repeating bottle, so went with the flow, not really knowing what we’d get. A large litre bottle of pale, decent wine arrived along with a bottle of water, although we’d obviously not been able to correctly ask for ‘sparkling’.
The pizza didn’t take long to arrive and was large with plenty of topping (tomato, cheese and a spicy pepperoni). The crust was quite thick and puffed up, but as we were sharing and hungry, it wasn’t a problem. The salad had a wide range of mixed leaves and we were provided with oil and vinegar and a pepper mill.
We enjoyed both dishes and finished our wine over a chat as were our neighbours, who fortunately weren’t smoking (it’s common in Serbia). Around 8.30pm, the guests arrived for their reserved table and we could understand why they’d reserved as the restaurant was busy all night.
We rounded off the meal with two excellent Americano and when we came to pay the bill, it had the main courses from the neighbouring table, but this was swiftly corrected. As we left, we heard our neighbours telling the waitress that they’d not had our coffee which has also appeared on their bill. At 2,916 Dinar, or around £22, we felt we’d had value for money.
