July 4; summertime and the living is easy 😎

Happy 245th America, celebrating our Vitosha portfolio, and a foodie staycation in Sofia... this was my week

Happy Sunday, and Happy Fourth of July to everyone who celebrates! 🇺🇸🥳

USA is one of the countries I consider home, so it’s always a pleasure to reflect on this day on everything we gain from having America around. My dad found a photo of a holiday road trip we did from Boston to Niagara Falls, on this day 28 years ago:

Me striking a pose or preparing to sneeze… on July 4th 1993 at Niagara Falls. Thanks Dad 💛

Celebrating our 13 new investments at Vitosha

On Tuesday, a long-held ambition of mine at Vitosha finally came to life, as we hosted our first Meet The Founders event, at our Missia23 office in Sofia. A little over a hundred of you showed up, and I’m excited to announce we’ll be doing this regularly from now on. You can read all about the thirteen new investments in this wonderful write-up by the formidable Dan Taylor at Tech.EU here.

Our Vitosha team with 6 of the 13 new companies, out of a total of 17. We need to do the next event in a place where we can shoot bigger group shots!

We’ve decided we’ll host our next Meet The Founders on Saturday, August 7 in Varna, so keep an eye out on this newsletter and on our Vitosha Insta channel @vitoshavp for the exact location, time, and sign up form. Come and have fun with us in Varna next month!

One of the things we’re going to do now regularly too, is sharing Vitosha Stories about our new companies and why we believe in them. This week I shared my story about why I’m very excited about our investment in Augment, and its founder Tim Petrov, who’s preparing to take the Esports world by storm with a tool to help competitive Esports players and their coaches to analyze and improve their performance:

Kitchen59: my new favorite place in Sofia 🛌

I’ve shared here before how thrilled I am about Kitchen59: a brand-new hotel, event space, and one-of-a-kind restaurant in Sofia. This weekend Ellie and I decided to test the place out, so we know where we’ll be sending those of you who come from out of town to visit us next time :)

Minimalist yet stylish rooms, with amazing Auping beds from The Netherlands, and awesome views of mountains and brutalist Sofia suburbs

Kitchen59 is an excellent spot for a weekend of THIS 🥂✨

A core feature of Kitchen59 is that it’s related (and located next-door) to the HRC Culinary Academy, a Dutch-founded school for top chefs worldwide. The hotel’s restaurant, Talents, is staffed by students and instructors from the academy, which makes for an incredible fine dining experience at very competitive rates. On Friday night we got extra lucky, as a group of Croatian visiting students were “graduating” from their exchange scholarship with HRC, and prepared an exquisite 5-course Dalmatian dinner, paired with some of the best wines Croatia has to offer.

Croatian top chefs to-be practicing their skill at Talents, preparing the Dalmatian starter course with octopus

One of the Croatian chefs slicing the Dalmatinski Pršut, a Croatian cured meat delicacy somewhere in between jamón and prosciutto

This was all as good (or better) as it looks and sounds 😇

Kitchen59 is scheduled to have a grand opening in September, with its two mind-blowing rooftop bars (hint: one has a pool with a swim-up bar) opening as well. So if you want to make it to the guest list, ping me.

Secret dinners, now also in Sofia 🔥

It’s been a fad for a while in other places, but now it’s come to Sofia too: secret dinners. A chef invites people over to a non-restaurant location and prepares a special dinner for a small group. One such chef duo are Nicky and Kristina, who under the Boycott brand run their secret dinners from a beautiful old residential apartment in downtown Sofia. Ellie booked with them for last night, and with a group of eight we walked up a few flights of stairs of an old Sofia apartment building to be treated to something quite extraordinary.

One wouldn’t expect this view to be a prelude to a top gourmet fine dining experience

Yet there we were

Five courses like these, I won’t even start to explain what this was, something with Black Sea mussels in Bulgarian dashi, again paired with some of best Bulgarian wines I’ve ever had,

Before we headed out for this secret dinner, as it was the annual European Museum Night, we stopped by a few galleries. One that left an impact with me was INTRO Art Gallery, which hosted the Camp Life exhibition by Elena Nazarova, that features pop-art works detailing the hardships endured by illegal refugees arriving in Europe, including a full-size mockup of a refugee tent and the average belongings of a refugee family.

Visiting the Camp Life exhibition at INTRO Gallery on European Museum Night

It’s worth to stand still for a minute to consider the plight of the millions of people who live right here beside us, in such conditions, and without any rights or prospects. Check out also Elena’s Insta for more info about her and her other projects.

Thanks for checking in today and talk to you next Sunday! 😇

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