Dinner at Ethno Restaurant Vayat

I was in Port Moody the other night and needed to find a place for dinner. We looked up restaurants near by and Ethno Restaurant Vayat popped up. Not knowing anything about Eastern European food other than porgies and struggling to remember where the Balkans is, we decided we have to go there for dinner to educate ourselves.

We got to the restaurant at around 7:30 PM and was bigger than we thought it would be. It had probably more than 20 tables although most of the restaurant was empty that night. The decorations were really cute, with an old vintage refrigerator/kitchen on the side for display. It looked like the owner was running the front of house by herself so services were a bit slower. We ordered the meat platter for one and the cabbage roll.

While we were waiting for our entrees, a basket of fresh baked bread arrived. It was HOT. We tried to pick it up when it first arrived and had to abort that idea. The bread was soft but a bit on the dense side. It would have probably gone nicely with butter but that wasn’t provided.

Fresh baked bread

The entrees arrived 15 minutes after we ordered. The meat platter came and the meats was served on a bed of thick cut fries, with side of coleslaw and a scoop of what tasted like sun dried tomato cream cheese. The cream cheese mixture went really nicely with the bread. The meats included one pork shish kebab, two chevaps (ground beef/pork kebab), house-made sausage, smoked boneless chicken thigh, a slice of smoked pork belly, and pork loin. To be honest, it was a lot of meat and was quite overwhelming. The kebab and chevaps were good. They were flavourful and juicy. The pork loin was basically a really thin piece of pork chop and it was dry and maybe a bit overcooked. The sausage reminds me of breakfast sausage. The smoked pork belly was a 6 cm piece of thick smoked bacon. It was good but it wasn’t anything special. The meats were quite greasy and the fresh coleslaw really helped revive my taste buds. I wished they had more of it. The highlight of the meal was the boneless smoked chicken. It was super smoky, juicy and tasty. The flavour melted on to the fries beneath it and made the fries that much better. I would recommend that you skip the meat platter and go straight for the smoked chicken.

Meat platter for one

The stuffed sour cabbage rolls were stuffed with rice and ground mixed meat. The cabbage rolls were cooked really nicely, it was tender but still had some resistance when I tried to cut it with my fork. I hate it when cabbage rolls are overcooked and just turns into mush. The cabbage rolls were stuffed with a mixture of rice and meats and the tomato sauce was pretty OK. The dish was not amazing and kind of forgettable.

My main takeaway is that I probably wouldn’t come back for the cabbage rolls but I would definitely come back for the smoked chicken.

Cabbage rolls with mashed potatoes