Local Dishes

1. sarmale

   Cabbage rolls stuffed with minced meat and rice

   Usage

   A festive-table staple, normally served with mămăligă (cornmeal porridge) and smântână (sour cream). DEX defines it as minced meat mixed with rice and wrapped in cabbage or vine leaves — both the soured-cabbage (varză murată) and the vine-leaf version are standard. One single roll is "sarma"

   Grammar Note

   Plural of the feminine noun "sarma". The definite article is suffixed: "sarmalele" (the sarmale) — Romanian attaches its definite article to the end of the word, not the front. From Turkish "sarma" (something rolled); cognate dish names exist in Greek, Bulgarian and Serbian

2. mămăligă

   Cornmeal porridge (polenta)

   Usage

   DEX defines it as cornmeal (rarely millet or buckwheat) boiled in water. It replaces bread as the staple starch and accompanies sarmale, tochitură and ciorbă — you rarely see it ordered on its own. ⚠ Applied to a person it is an insult meaning "spineless", so keep it to food contexts

   Grammar Note

   Feminine. Definite form "mămăliga" (common on menus); plural "mămăligi"

3. ciorbă

   Sour soup

   Usage

   ⚠ Not the same as "supă" (clear soup). DEX defines ciorbă as a soured broth with vegetables and often meat — the sourness is what makes it a ciorbă. It is soured with borș (fermented bran liquid), vinegar or lemon. Menus list "supă" and "ciorbă" as separate sections

   Grammar Note

   Feminine; definite "ciorba", plural "ciorbe". From Turkish "çorba" (ultimately Arabic "šorba"), the same root as Italian "sorbetto" and French "sirop"

4. borș

   Fermented bran liquid used to sour soup

   Usage

   ⚠ Not the Ukrainian/Russian beetroot "borscht". The primary DEX sense of Romanian "borș" is a sour liquid made by fermenting wheat, rye or sugar-beet bran in water — the souring agent itself. Menu items like "borș de pește" (fish) or "borș de miel" (lamb) are soups soured with it. ⚠ It is also slang for "blood", so keep it to food contexts

   Grammar Note

   Neuter; definite "borșul", plural "borșuri". Borrowed from Russian/Ukrainian борщ, but the Romanian meaning has shifted

5. ciorbă de burtă

   Sour tripe soup

   Usage

   Beef tripe boiled for hours, then soured with lots of garlic and lemon (or vinegar) and finished with a sour-cream-and-egg-yolk liaison. Usually served with hot peppers (ardei iute) on the side. An Ottoman-era dish, also called "schembea"

6. ciorbă rădăuțeană

   Rădăuți-style sour chicken soup

   Usage

   From Rădăuți in northern Bukovina. It is ciorbă de burtă with the tripe swapped out for chicken, thickened and soured with sour cream, flour, egg and vinegar — a useful option if you would rather avoid offal. Created by Cornelia Dumitrescu in 1982 and registered with the Suceava county tourism office that same year, so it is a relatively recent dish

7. mici

   Grilled skinless minced-meat rolls

   Usage

   DEX: small sausages of spiced minced meat, grilled over charcoal. Street-stall, beer-garden and festival food, served with mustard (muștar) and bread (pâine), and ordered by the piece ("4 mici"). They have no sausage casing

   Grammar Note

   Plural of the masculine noun "mic" (a little one). DEX gives "mititei" (singular "mititel") as a synonym, so menus print either spelling. The definite form is "micii"

8. tochitură

   Pork and offal stew with polenta, fried egg and cheese

   Usage

   Fatty pork, offal and sausage cut small and fried down with onion, then served over mămăligă with a fried egg and grated cheese on top. It began as a dish made at pig-slaughtering time; "tochitură moldovenească" is the best-known regional version

   Grammar Note

   Feminine; definite "tochitura", plural "tochituri". Also recorded as "topitură"

9. bulz

   Polenta ball stuffed with sheep cheese

   Usage

   DEX: a ball of hot mămăligă with sheep cheese (brânză de oaie) or urdă inside. A shepherds' dish, standard fare at mountain huts and trailside inns; baked versions come topped with sour cream and bacon

   Grammar Note

   Recorded both as masculine (plural "bulzi") and neuter (plural "bulzuri"); definite form "bulzul"

10. zacuscă

    Roasted aubergine and pepper spread

    Usage

    DEX: an appetiser of aubergine, peppers and onion fried in oil (or of fish with vegetables), preserved in jars. Households put up large batches each autumn; it is eaten spread on bread as a starter, and jars are sold in markets and souvenir shops

    Grammar Note

    Feminine; definite "zacusca", plural "zacuști". From Russian закуска (appetiser)

11. salată de vinete

    Smoked aubergine salad

    Usage

    ⚠ Despite "salată" it is not a leaf salad but a pâté-like starter. The aubergines are roasted until the skin chars, then peeled, chopped on a wooden board and beaten with sunflower oil, lemon juice (or vinegar), salt and pepper. Served chilled with chopped onion or tomato. Olive oil is deliberately avoided

12. salată de boeuf

    Beef and vegetable mayonnaise salad

    Usage

    Boiled beef, potato, carrot and peas diced and bound with mayonnaise and pickles — close to Russian Olivier salad. A fixture of the Christmas and New Year table, served as a decorated first course

    Grammar Note

    "boeuf" is French for beef, kept in its French spelling; it does not follow Romanian orthography. Modern menus increasingly write it as salată „Boeuf"

13. iahnie de fasole

    Bean stew with onion and tomato

    Usage

    DEX: a plain dish made from vegetables (especially beans), fish or meat, simmered down with onion, oil and tomato paste. Made without meat it appears on "de post" (fasting) menus, which makes it a useful marker when looking for a vegetarian option

14. cașcaval pane

    Breaded fried cheese

    Usage

    Slices of the semi-hard cheese "cașcaval" coated in flour, egg and breadcrumbs, then fried. A pub and diner starter, and an easy order for travellers avoiding meat; usually served with chips and a tartare-style sauce

15. papanași

    Fried cheese doughnuts with sour cream and jam

    Usage

    DEX: made from cow's-milk curd cheese (brânză de vaci), eggs and flour or semolina, either boiled or fried. Restaurants serve the fried version — a large ring with a small ball on top, covered in sour cream (smântână) and blueberry or sour-cherry jam (dulceață). Portions are big enough to share

    Grammar Note

    Plural of the masculine "papanaș"; definite "papanașii". ⚠ The same word also names a clover (Trifolium arvense), but the culinary sense is primary

16. cozonac

    Sweet yeast bread with walnut or cocoa filling

    Usage

    DEX: a pastry of leavened dough enriched with eggs, milk, butter, sugar and spices. Baked for Easter and Christmas, when supermarket shelves fill with it. Fillings are walnut (nucă), poppy seed (mac) or Turkish delight (rahat)

    Grammar Note

    Masculine; definite "cozonacul", plural "cozonaci". Called "colac" in parts of Transylvania. From Bulgarian "kuzunak"

17. covrig

    Ring- or figure-eight-shaped bread pretzel

    Usage

    DEX: a ring- or figure-eight-shaped wheat-flour product sprinkled with salt, sesame or poppy seeds. The cheapest street snack in Romania, sold hot from small kiosks (covrigărie) near stations and on street corners. Those from Buzău are the best-known regional version

    Grammar Note

    Masculine; definite "covrigul", plural "covrigi". From Bulgarian "kovrig"

18. plăcintă

    Filled pastry made from thin layered dough

    Usage

    DEX: layered thin dough with a filling — cheese (brânză), meat (carne), fruit (fructe), and regionally potato, pumpkin or walnut. Sweet and savoury versions share the same name, so specify the filling when ordering, e.g. "cu brânză"

    Grammar Note

    Feminine; definite "plăcinta", plural "plăcinte". From Latin "placenta" (a flat cake); Hungarian "palacsinta" and German "Palatschinken" spread from this word

19. drob de miel

    Baked lamb offal loaf

    Usage

    DEX: chopped lamb offal wrapped in caul fat (prapur) and baked in a tin. ⚠ It is an offal dish — avoid it if that is not for you. It appears on tables only around Easter and is absent from menus the rest of the year

20. mucenici

    Figure-eight sweet dough cakes eaten on 9 March

    Usage

    Figure-eight shaped dough topped with ground walnut and sugar or honey, made only around 9 March (the Orthodox commemoration of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste). ⚠ The preparation differs sharply by region: Moldavia in the north-east bakes them large from cozonac dough with honey and walnut, while Dobrogea in the south-east makes them small and boils them in sugared water with cinnamon and walnut

    Grammar Note

    Plural of the masculine "mucenic" (martyr); definite "mucenicii". DEX records the regional names "sfințișor" (Moldavia), "bradoș", "brăduleț" and "brânduș"

21. clătite

    Thin rolled pancakes

    Usage

    DEX: a thin sheet of batter fried in fat, spread with jam, marmalade, cheese or vegetables and then rolled. Closer to a crêpe than a thick pancake, and always served rolled. Sweet fillings (cu dulceață, cu ciocolată) and savoury ones (cu brânză, cu ciuperci) share the same name

    Grammar Note

    Plural of the feminine "clătită"; definite "clătitele"

22. telemea

    Brined white cheese, similar to feta

    Usage

    DEX: drained curd cut into blocks and kept in brine — a salty white cheese much like feta, served at breakfast, as a starter and in salads. ⚠ "Telemea de Ibănești" holds an EU protected designation of origin (DOP) and "Telemeaua de Sibiu" a protected geographical indication (IGP), so those two names are tied to their regions

    Grammar Note

    Feminine; definite "telemeaua", plural "telemele". From Turkish "teleme"; also known as "brânză de Brăila"

23. brânză de burduf

    Kneaded cheese matured in a skin or fir-bark casing

    Usage

    Sheep's "caș" left to ripen, pressed of its whey, then kneaded with salt (brânză frământată) and packed into an animal-skin bag (burduf) or a fir-bark tube to mature. Strongly salty and aromatic; eaten with bulz or mămăligă. Sold loose by weight at mountain markets and monastery shops

24. pastramă

    Salted, smoked and dried meat

    Usage

    DEX: meat preserved by salting, smoking, drying and seasoning — most often mutton (oaie) or beef, sometimes pork, goat or goose. ⚠ Shares its root with American deli pastrami but is not the same thing: in Romania it means mutton first. In the Danube Delta there is "pastramă de crap", made from carp

    Grammar Note

    Feminine; definite "pastrama", plural "pastrame" (or "păstrămuri" for types). From Turkish "pastırma", ultimately Modern Greek "pastós" (salted)

25. cârnați de Pleșcoi

    Spicy Pleșcoi sausages

    Usage

    Mutton sausages from the village of Pleșcoi in Buzău county — heavily seasoned with garlic and hot pepper (ardei iute) and shaped in thin curls. Registered as an EU protected geographical indication (IGP), so only sausages from the registered area may use the name. ⚠ Genuinely hot

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