Çka Ka Qëllu
Ramiz Kukaj brought the yokes, brass coffee mills and hammered dishes on these walls over from the old country.1 Some of them, he says, go back to the 18th century.1 The kitchen cooks the Albanian north, so veal and cultured cream do nearly all the work.1
Why go
Kukaj and his chef, Afrim Kaliqani, both come from Kosovo.1 The menu follows them. Qofte are ground with onion and red pepper, qebapa are skinless and grilled, and tava is stewed in a clay dish.1 Yogurt and fresh curds land on almost everything else. Pete Wells's way in starts on Arthur Avenue.1 It crosses the indoor market Fiorello La Guardia ordered up and comes out the far door on Hughes Avenue.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: kajmak with the warm bread. The cream sits between creme fraiche, cream cheese and butter.1 The bread comes out of the pizza oven you pass on the way in.1
- Order: the mantia baked with yogurt in a clay dish. The same veal dumplings will seem tough and dry, Wells wrote, if you order them alone.1
- Order: kacamak, which is cornmeal beaten with kajmak until it eats like very good mashed potatoes.1
- Avoid: the fli on its own. Wells found the layered pancake somewhat less than fully tender.1 It wants yogurt foraged from elsewhere on the table.1
What locals & experts say
- Pete Wells, The New York Times, two stars and a Critic's Pick on 12 March 2019, on the block:
the signs and menus facing the street are still written in Italian but many of the people in the back rooms, seasoning the sausages and frying the veal cutlets, are Albanian.
1 - Ligaya Mishan, The New York Times, ranking it 96th of a hundred New York restaurants on 11 May 2026:
an exuberance of bread, meat and dairy, rich and fortifying.
2
Good to know
- Booking: walk in, at 2321 Hughes Avenue in Belmont.2
- Dessert: baked here. Baklava, a nut cake called haxhimak, and sheqerpare, a sugar cookie with nuts pressed into the top. The coffee is boiled on the stove and poured from a long-handled brass pitcher.1
- Same owner: Kukaj also runs Tradita, an Albanian room up in Norwood.1
Verdict
should-visit — Order a salad against the clay dishes. Wells calls eating this food without one unimaginable and probably unadvisable. Every salad seemed to him to be cucumber, tomato, red onion and cheese in slightly different arrangements, so one is enough for the table.