Pix from Rudar S.C. with the Wet Towel Club

This week, Counter Culture visits Rudar Soccer Club with the Wet Towel Club, a dining organization that meets monthly. Rudar's subterranean dining room went public a few years back, and now it's one of the few places in town you can enjoy the cooking of Istria, an Adriatic peninsula just east of Trieste, and currently part of Croatia. Some of the dishes we wolfed down included envelope-shaped pasta called fuzi, an earthy soup of white beans with smoked meat in its depths, and skinless grilled lamb sausages known by the diminutive name of cevapcici. Below find a selection of photographs that show some of the better food we had that evening.

The exterior of the United Miners Rudar Soccer Club in Astoria. Yes, it has a public restaurant, but you have to find your way downstairs.

White bean soup with the sausage option exercised.

The celebrated pasta of Istria--fuzi with veal sauce.

Dorado, a sustainable farmed Mediterranean fish, comes dabbed with green relish.

Could baby squid look any cuter?

For carnivores, the multi-meat platter is irresistible. The red dip on the left is ivar, made of pureed pimentos.