Until recently, we felt lukewarm about Bistro Bulgari, a Bulgarian joint that resides at the foot of Crystal City’s restaurant row. Perhaps it was the fact that, in the numerous times we’ve been to Bulgari, the dining room was never more than at half capacity, which lent itself to the gloomy atmosphere of a restaurant’s probable demise. Or maybe it was the fact that no matter how good the food was, we somehow found ourselves staring wistfully at Kebab Palace across the street.

More often than not, we had chosen to eat there out of a sense of culinary duty. After all, to our knowledge at least, Bistro Bulgari is the only Bulgarian restaurant in the D.C. area now that Winchester’s Cafe Sofia is apparently closed. But on our most recent visit we had a dessert revelation that caused a dramatic shift in our opinion (more on that later).

Bistro Bulgari’s menu offers the natural fusion of Mediterranean and Middle and Eastern European cuisines that results from Bulgaria’s unique position lodged near the crossroads of Europe and Asia.

The items on the menu can be hit or miss. For instance, their imam baildi, one of our favorite eggplant dishes at other restaurants, disappointed us with a surprise bread crumb coating on a feeble eggplant.

Their shopska salad, on the other hand, shows how amazing the simplest salad can be. It’s a variation on the familiar tomato, cucumber and feta salad, but the absolute blizzard of grated feta that obscures most of the veggies separates it from the typical feta crumble fare.