Pork leg with lavender and thyme cocktail are served in a Sofia restaurant

The team of "Cosmos" relies on the Bulgarian tradition but monitors global trends as well

Pork legs found their place on the Bulgarian table many years ago, even the characters of Remark enjoyed them. In Bulgaria they are most often used as an ingredient in the brawn dish.

Therefore, it is not very easy to imagine that gourmet specialties may be prepared from pork legs. If you have difficulties with your imagination, you can go to the center of Sofia and see for yourself that it is possible. Gourmet pork legs are among the newest items on the menu of the "Cosmos" restaurant. The dish is prepared with sweetbreads, wild mushrooms, apples, sauerkraut and lavender sauce.

Here you can try a cocktail with ingredients such as thyme, mountain tea, violet, cloves.

We have a carefully selected wine list and excellent bartenders who literally cook our cocktails with the most varied ingredients, the owner Nikolay Grigorov says.

He is interested in space, reads books on the topic and never misses the show of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, whom he often quotes: "The Cosmos is all that is or was or ever will be," he says. And adds: "This very sentence was like an inspiration for me to create a new space bearing that name. The choice was actually very personal and emotional."
This is not his first restaurant. Before that he opened "Rocket Rakia Bar" shortly before Christmas in 2012 and "Cocktail Bar Sputnik" - in 2015.

Before he started in the restaurant industry, Grigorov worked in the field of computers. "I found that work a bit boring and lonely," he recalls and adds: "The idea to have a restaurant arose from my desire for more communication and socializing, because at that time I needed it. I wanted to create a real place to meet nice and different people who feel good together."

When he started developing the "Cosmos" project the work was slowed down due to the lack of money. The financial resources we had in mind were not sufficient and we had to seek the assistance of the Bulgarian Development Bank, the businessman says.
He received support from the microfinance institution JOBS - a subsidiary of BDB. He completed the project and "Cosmos" already meets its customers. He says they are different, probably connected by their love for well prepared food.

All our guests are very nice, of different ages, people literally from around the world, who want to experience something different, not just eat, Grigorov said. People prefer his establishments because they rely on typical Bulgarian elements, but also closely monitor all new global techniques for food and drink preparation.

"We want to combine our traditions with the global trends and make the Bulgarian food more interesting and impressive. The idea is to offer our guests an experience satisfying all their senses, so we paid special attention to the interior lighting and the music in the restaurant", explains the restaurateur.

He says that with time he stopped setting specific goals. He learned to live in the present and this helps him develop. I am a man who follows his intuition and is ready to depart from the preset direction at any time and change his life by 180 degrees, he explained.
He finds his current life very interesting and everyone who appears in it as well, whether a customer, an employee or an accidental encounter on the street. Due to his restaurant business he learned to see people and to learn from anyone standing before him.