If you go to Ohrid and ask the locals if they know Dimche Kanevce, there is no one there who hasn’t heard about Dimche or about his restaurant “Kaj Kanevce”. “Kaj Kanevce” ( At Kanevce) is a local restaurant that is a great combination of ethnicity, tradition and modernity. For the host Dimche, this is a story that he has been writing for 10 years.
Last week while enjoying our trip to Ohrid we had a coffee with Dimche on the shore of the lake of Ohrid and he told us his story. The story about “Kaj Kanevce” is 10 years old, in fact, this year they celebrated the 10th jubilee birthday.
He remembers how he prepared the food quite carefully, focused to make everything perfect. He started preparing sarma rolls, stuffed peppers, moussaka until he got an ideal menu filled with traditional food and of course fish.
Today, on his menu you can find peppers, sarma rolls, moussaka with zucchini and eggplant and the traditional tavche-gravche (baked beans) with homemade sausage or Macedonian burger. In order to attract the attention of the guests so they come again, he has enriched his menu offer with meat and fish specialties to order, for which the guests should make an appointment three hours in advance or for the next day, for lunch or dinner. Not to forget to mention this region’s specialties such as the Ohrid chomlek, the Ohrid turli tava, the Ohrid meatball, the fish, the eel made in the traditional Ohrid way, the trout and a number of other specialties that are prepared in Ohrid.
According to Dimche, the Ohrid specialty that everyone should try is “Ohrid Chomlek”. Whether it is with meat or vegetarian version, this specialty is a great combination of flavors and aromas of the ingredients. Chomlek is a combination of the fruits and vegetables found in the Macedonian gardens, onions, garlic, meat – beef and pork (the vegetarian version is with mushrooms), prunes, white wine and spices, and of course something that is necessary to have in every recipe is lots of love.
Besides the chomlek, something that he recommends to all the guests is the so called “Sofia” salad, which is an unusual combination that delights everyone. This is his own recipe a salad that gets the name of his niece Sofia, who ate certain food every day, so he tried to use some of those ingredients in the salad and made a unique combination, simple, unusual, refreshing and of course delicious. The salad contains grated cabbage, chopped tomatoes, walnuts, grated cheese, grated yellow cheese, spices, olive oil, salt, basil and oregano, for the decoration and also like an ingredient he adds broccoli. For Dimche, this salad has the look of Sofia and her hair.
Dimche says that he is a vegetarian and that is why the most important thing is to offer a menu for people like him and with the enriched menu, the foreigners are delighted with everything that the Macedonian cuisine has to offer to vegetarians.
The things that make special and unique this restaurant are: first of all the location, located in the Kaneo neighborhood, the Macedonian paradise, the menu which is a combination of traditional and modern dishes. If you want to visit the restaurant of Dimche it is easy, you just need to rent a boat from the port of Ohrid and in just five minutes you are in front of the restaurant and if you go on foot, you only need to pass the famous old fishing village and of course the church of St. John Kaneo.
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