Romanians have the peculiar habit of, on occasion, eating food. This is talk of such food. So without further ado, let’s get to the heart of the matter – sometimes literally. Romanians consume offal, we eat nose to tail, like most not that prosperous countries, waste not and all that. As a note, I will not be covering fresh blood, as this is a touchy subject for outsiders. I will just mention that the best quality is from subjects 16 to 25 and their virginity is unimportant.
I will not attempt to cover what are authentic, traditional Romanian dishes. I have no idea and doubt anyone does. There is no way of knowing where a particular dish comes from, and Romanians generally share a lot of dishes with other countries around them. There are plenty of Slavic, Turkish, Greek and German/Hungarian influences. While Romania’s version of a stuffed leafs dish may derive from Greek, they may be independent. I will not go into the food available to relatively well-off urbanites such as yours truly (the sushi isn’t bad), but what is the generally the food of the common folk (such as you glibertarians might consume were you residents of this fine country).
Romanians do eat a lot of ciorbă, but how typical it is, I dunno. Here is a example of a pork one, with a large bone with some meat covered by broth, a small glass of tuica and the requisite hot pepper. Please also notice the typical Eastern European plastic table covering for the kitchen table – which as you can see also graces my kitchen. Eating such ciorbăcan be an unaesthetic affair and a bit savage if you are not used to it, as it implies taking the bone in your hands, ripping meat off it with you teeth and then loudly slurping the bone marrow.
Some claim mujdei de usturoi is Romanian, which is basically crushed garlic with salt, oil and water. I dunno, but several countries have garlic dips, although most are creamy and mayo-like. Mujdei is more watery and has small slivers of garlic in it, unincorporated in a paste. We also have mămăligă – basically corn meal, salt and water – similar to polenta, with various degrees of softness, depending on taste. It can range from quite solid to porridge like.
Now an ehm… burning question is: is Romanian food hot or spicy? No it is not, or very rarely so. The local habit is to have a hot pepper on the side of the dish and occasionally bite it. This is raw in summer or pickled in winter. Generally Romanian farmers are not careful about grouping their peppers by heat or cultivar, so a particular pepper is usually a gamble on how hot. Romanians are not particular about cultivars so you always buy/request peppers. And in the same batch some may be hot, some not. Ciorbă is always accompanied by a hot pepper. For cabbage dishes some people – me included in some cases where the smell factor is not important – bite out of cloves of raw garlic as they eat.
As for other spices, Romanian kitchens are not spice rich. Besides the ever present salt and pepper, garlic is used a lot, alongside thyme, paprika, parsley, dill. Bay leaves on occasion. Some other dried spices in small quantities.
For oil, Romanians most often use sunflower. It is cheaper and readily available, and made the locals feel good because it is mostly of local production, Romania is an important grower of sunflowers in Europe. Similar to sugar coming from locally grown sugar beets rather than imported cane sugar, although olive oil and cane sugar are rapidly growing in quantity consumed. Vinegar is most often white wine vinegar, followed by apple vinegar.
Cheese is a big part of Romanian diet. Brânză is, as a random factoid, one of the words still considered to be left in Romanian from the Dacian language. In Romania, it is actually split into several categories: white cheese called brânză and yellow cheese called Caşcaval (etymology apparently from Sicilian Caciocavallo cheese). Brânză can be telemea (somewhat feta like) either fresh or aged, caş (soft with very little salt), urdă (made from whey) or using the diminutive branzica for cottage cheese. Caşcaval is often eaten breaded and deep fried, unlike the white stuff.
The main meats the Romanians eat are pork and chicken. Those are by far the most consumed, with beef, mutton and waterfowl as second tier, “whatever else” is third.
The main fish freshwater eaten are crap (European carp), caras (crucian carp) which is the main pan fish, somn (wells catfish), biban (perch), pastrav (trout), ştiuca (pike), şalau (zander), Scrumbie (Pontic Shad), with some other minor fish.
Traditionally more freshwater fish is eaten than salt water. Stuff like tuna and salmon and sea bream are now eaten in the cities, but I will not include them. The main saltwater fish are chefal (golden grey mullet), guvid (Pinchuk’s goby), Hamsie (anchovy) served whole deep fried, zargan (garfish, Belone belone, or sea needle). Of the pricier traditional fish, the delicacies so to say, are calcan (turbot), rechin (shark) and various sturgeons. Fish is most often eaten grilled or fried (usually dragged through corn flower before frying). Grilled fish is often eaten as Saramura (briened). Basically you heat some water, add salt, pepper, slice chile peppers in it and pour hot water on top. When you take the fish from the grill you place it in the brine, also besides on the grill sometimes bell pepper and tomatoes are added, and after grilled themselves, they are peeled cut into chunks and placed into the brine. Grilled chicken thighs are also sometimes eaten in Saramura.
Romanians, at least ones I know, usually have a side salad with dishes. Unlike other people who have the salad as a separate course, salad in Romania is on the side of the main for lunch/dinner, or as a side to breakfast. It is most often lettuce or chopped cabbage (with sunflower oil and vinegar, not ugh mayo). In summer it is tomato salad – tomatoes, salt, pepper, sunflower oil and chopped raw onion. Another local favorite is ardei copt (baked bell pepper) which is as it sounds – you put a dry pan on a fire and add peppers in it until the skin turns blackish and can be easily removed. Take them off, peel the skin; add a bit of salt, a bit of oil and a bit of vinegar, and that is it. In winter, side salads are replaced by pickles – Romanians eat a lot of pickles.
On pickles, Romanians have The Big Four pickles with a bunch of minor additions. The Big Four being cabbage, cucumbers, gogosari (a cultivar of ball pepper) and gogonele (unripe tomatoes). There are two ways of pickling: brine and vinegar. Cabbage and tomatoes are always brined, gogosar is always vinegar, cucumbers can be either the right way (brine) or the wrong way (vinegar). Cucumbers are also the only ones pickled in summer, with a different taste due to much faster pickling at a much higher temperature (often left in direct sunlight as they pickle). Autumn pickles are low temp long time.
While these are the main pickles, many other things are added, usually in smaller quantities mixed in. For example when pickling gogosari, the core is taken out and the inside filled with, in general, cauliflower, grapes and slices of carrot. Among the green tomatoes we get cauliflower, cabbage, and some green bell pepper, sometimes small unripe watermelons and sometime red beet, mostly to give it colour. Cucumbers (if you ignore some dill which is added) and cabbage are pickled alone. In general horseradish is added to most pickles as a preservative (don’t know if it actually works as one but is used as one nonetheless.)
Comments
166 responses to “Romanian Food – A Short Primer – Part One”
Thanks for the article.
I’m the opposite of a picky eater and it just about lunch time, but no thanks. I can see why there aren’t a lot of Romanian restaurants around here.
I am a picky eater, but… second. I hope you have good booze, PITS.
Though I do like pickles, so I could survive a short trip…
theres lots of steak and potatoes and stuff around, but no point in making a post on that
No point?!
What cuts of steak? Seasoning? Marinade? How’s it cooked?
or beef no american cuts really… tenderloin is the most popular albeit pricey.
Pork we eat ribs and a cut that I don’t know how to translate and chops
For mutton is popular as pastrama – salt aged basically
Grilled mostly over charcoal or wood
Not much marinade , mostly salt peeper and thyme maybe paprika or garlic
The part you “don’t know how to translate” is called lips and assholes. And there’s no need to be embarrassed, we use it in our hot dogs.
“She loves me so, she hates to be alone,
she dont eat meat, but she sure likes the BONE”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TL5ofVC0EDQ
I have yet to see something in one of your posts that I wouldn’t eat. That table of cheese is basically heaven.
^^^ What she said. I meant to previously add “great article”
Right? I generally am not a fan of eating things that still have their face attached…but I would make an exception for that stuffed pike…
well plan a trip to Romania. See if you are brave enough to eat tripe ciorba
I didn’t mention tripe Cordoba in this post although to be hones it is I think of Turkish origin. But very popular.
Those both sound like things I would eat–or at least try!
tripe can be an acquired taste… or acquired texture maybe
Cordoba? lol at spellcheck
I thought maybe it was a regionally distinct type of ciorba specific to Cordoba. 😉 But I guess not!
What’s the best approximation you can give me of the texture? (I don’t like most puddings or jellos, but I don’t have an issue with raw meat, mushrooms, or things like that.)
it’s well mostly chewy. It is cow stomach. You can get a piece of it in Montana and taste 😀
Hah! If it bears a resemblance to “rocky mountain oysters,” I’ll be just fine. I don’t think I’ve ever set out to eat stomach, specifically, though.
Softer and more yielding than calamari, but there are a couple of different ‘types’ of tripe depending on where in the alimentary canal you get it from.
Tripe is like wrinkly cow calamari, if you’ve ever had squid.
Meh, I am Italian… we eat tripe
So do Scots, Mexicans….almost everyone has some sort of it.
I’d be face down in that table of cheese, ‘ceptin’ my wife would’ve already beaten me to it. Being Dutch, she thinks cheese is one of the four food groups.
Is… Is she wrong?
I didn’t say that.
Four food groups:
Cheese
Meat
Nuts
Alcohol
You misspelled nicotine
Actually, when I was in Uni, it was
salt
sugar
grease
caffeine.
I’d eat all of the stuff mentioned in this article. Except for carp. But yes to all of the other fishies, the pickles, all of it.
Apologies for going OT so soon, but just so I don’t forget.
What’s this stuff with the Adamescu family? Who are the bad guys, if any?
everyone basically. he was fucked by the government but you can’t say he didndo nuffin
there is a post on samizdata blog with comments from your truly
Oh, that was you! Thanks for contributing.
well you dont think there is more than one romanian libertarian …
We can live in hope.
Pie, I enjoy your Romania themed articles.
thanks. Also notice the alt text
What *is* the deal with the plastic table coverings in Eastern Bloc countries?
easy to clean mostly. everything just washes off
When a Romanian girl’s brothers decide you weren’t respectful enough, it makes it easier to roll your bullet-riddled corpse in the table covering to be dumped in the Siret for rapid disposal with a lot less mess.
This is known.
That sounds a lot more complicated than just finding a construction site in which the foundation is about to be poured and dumping it there.
Not everybody shares the Italian penchant for covering the entire world in concrete.
The main fish freshwater eaten are crap (European carp), caras (crucian carp) which is the main pan fish, somn (wells catfish), biban (perch), pastrav (trout), ştiuca (pike), şalau (zander), Scrumbie (Pontic Shad), with some other minor fish.-
Carp do indeed taste like crap.
goddamnit stupid typo. I like carp. I really do. Fried with mujdei or in saramura
To be fair, I’ve never tried carp, so I have no basis for the remark. I would like to try it if I can find it. I’ve never seen it for sale.
you may have the Asian invasive carp in rivers. caras is tastier but goddamn it has a lot of small bones.
We have grass carp, but we don’t eat them.
You want common or European carp. It can be found in Florida, and just about every other state. How to tell the two apart.
This reminds me, I haven’t been fishing in 2018 yet. Got to get on that.
Just eat a goldfish. They’re cousins.
This recipe is from the next country over, (sorry PIE) but you could try Halászlé. It’s a spicy fish soup (the Hungarians insist that it’s a stew but it’s too thin for that in my opinion) that is made with freshwater fish. Historically whatever the fisherman cought that day, but most versions are made with either carp or perch. Grandma would make it with walleye whenever I brought some home. I’ll have to ask my mom to dig out grandma’s recipe, but in the meantime these guys seen to have a good take on it.
I saw that dish on that show Andrew Zimmerman does.
Hungarians do have quite spicier food than us. We just take bites of chili peeper here and there.
In the Danube delta the classical fisherman soup consists of boiling a whole lot of small fish – basically detritus from the catch – a long time to give the broth taste and then taking them out to discard or feed to cats or something and add a few large pieces of fish to eat.
Pretty much. The fisherman would start the soup in the morning with the leftovers from the last day’s catch; bait fish, fish heads, offal. They’d let it simmer for hours to make the stock, come back and drop some good fish into the stock to make the soup. Hungarians just add paprika and sour cream to everything.
like this
https://www.bucataras.ro/uploads/modules/news/4016/656x440_crap-prajit-16603.jpg
or this
https://www.viata-libera.ro/media/k2/items/cache/d5aed91ab95626f2f1faaa5fec721a4e_L.jpg
Looks tasty.
or feast your eyes on fried goby with garlic
https://www.dorianradu.ro/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/guvizi-prajiti-1000×622.jpg
Looks creepy.
Looks like we found Nemo.
That’s what she said.
fired anchovies or whitebait in general are eaten almost as you would eat salted peanuts, as a snack
https://www.reteteculinare.ro/assets/files/recipe/8596/fdb_1475479837_hamsii_cu_faina_de_malai_prajite_la_cuptor_95296_8596.jpg
Haven’t had whitebait cooked that way in years, *sniff* Time to return to the Old Country.
Check your freedom of thought at the airport.
Or as Tres Sr. fondly calls carp: “sewer bass”
And sometimes they even put it in food!
Thanks for another insightful article, Pie. Good stuff!
I find it interesting that you have salad as a side for breakfast. Is it generally the same as one would have with lunch/dinner?
not always. Maybe . Breakfast is well not really salad honestly just chopped either tomatoes or ball peppers or cucumbers or just whole radishes or maybe raw onion. Lunch would be lettuce, cabbage, baked pepper, or maybe pickled mushrooms or vegetables. You can have a tomato or cucumber salad as a side for lunch but not a lettuce salad as a side for breakfast.
Steve Smith find Romanian customs rude, Steve always provide plenty bone for guests
Do the progs at your local university really care about police brutality and protecting the 4th Amendment? If their thought process works like these wonderful tweets, not a fucking chance.
Your stuff is always fascinating- as much time as I spent in Europe, Romania never ended up on my schedule, dammit.
Cheese is a big part of Romanian diet. Brânză is, as a random factoid, one of the words still considered to be left in Romanian from the Dacian language.
I’m wondering about the relationship to Branzi, an Italian cheese from near Bergamo (yes, the village is called Branzi, but which gave which its name?).
I would say no connection… but who knows? The thing is there are words suspected from Dacian but no one knows. Maybe they are, maybe they are Thracian maybe they are leftover from an old proto-indo-european word. Or maybe there is no such thing as proto-indo-european. who the hell knows. so there could be a common root. or not.
Just remember, the ducks come from the trucks.
can’t say that Romania is a must visit, but it can be good if you end up in the right places. You can go to mountain villages that the lifestyle is like 100 years ago, but also to reasonably modern cities. We have mountains, seaside, delta … But the tourism infrastructure is not great. But it is reasonably safe and the people are hospitable
That sounds like my kind of place. Other than the meat.
What’s the age of consent?
15, except for non-penetrative sex, in which case it is 13.
“non-penetrative sex”
Over or under bra?
romania is not particularly vegan friendly…
I’m not a vegan. If you have bread and cheese, I’m taken care of.
Would Trump call it a shithole?
I’d go just for the pickled stuff and some of that freshwater fish, like pike, sounds really good.
Not if they have Russian pee hoes.
Shit, that reply was to Q. I can’t post right today.
Or the Slovak bryndza.
When I lived in Austin, there was a Romanian place called (‘natch) Cafe Drakula. Lots of cabbage and beans:
https://www.yelp.com/biz_photos/drakula-austin
like this?
https://www.cutiutacuretete.ro/upl/adm01/rpLZW3A5slcf7gob1mj2Xa6zMukFYHOP.jpg
Fasole or beans are most often eaten with smoked pork or sausage. Pork as in smoked rib or I think pork knuckle or ham hock dunno . What Germans would call Schweinshaxe
Yes, they served it with sausages.
In Murikah, only cucumbers are called pickles. We call pickled cabbage, kraut. American pickle lots of stuff. Honestly one of the best things I’ve every had pickled is zucchini. You just cut it up in thin strips like you do cabbage to pickle and put it in brine. It’s delicious. Corn is also wonderful pickled if you do it right, the white usually works best.
Don’t forget giardiniera.
I thought it was Mexican for the longest time, since the local Mexican place put it out on the table. It’s fantastic rolled in buttered corn tortillas.
The best thing in that is the cauliflower and those little onions.
Don’t forget giardiniera.
I had that once after I drank from a stream. It sucked
This is why Japanese people get so sick
we pickle very small unripe watermelons. people love them but i never really got the taste. I love salt bribed cauliflower though
I bribe my cauliflower with cash.
I haven’t had that one, but I’d try it. Pickled stuff is like fried stuff, it’s almost always good. Here we even fry battered pickles, they’re great!
*flashback to memory of eating too many pickled eggs*
Eggs is one of the things I don’t care for pickled.
Everything detailed in this article sounds absolutely heavenly.
PieInDaSky, do Romanians eat a soup made from fermented grain? My grandmother in Poland would occasionally make it. In Polish it’s called zur, and it has a very distinct tangy and savory flavor. I never believed it to be an exclusively Polish thing and wondered if there are any variations of it elsewhere.
no not fermented grain soup here. Although theoretically bors which is the souring agent is made of fermented grain. wheat bran specifically
Do you guys have tabbouleh there? I had never heard of it, but my wife bought some recently. It’s originally Arab, but it’s very popular in Brazil and I guess in parts of Europe.
i think is Lebanese actually. we have it in lebanese/arab/turkish restaurants but not as a romanian dish and not common
Indeed there are. Most Slavic countries have a version.
I should have figured that everything in known existence has a respective Wikipedia page.
Miss Romania 2014.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/01/eb/97/01eb97a8c3ef1f68e1ae4afeac7e5713–universe-romania.jpg
I like how the tag is sticking out of her top.
Will she sealcoat my driveway too?
a famous romania news anchor used to go to the same gym as me. looked great in yoga pantsd
http://assets.sport.ro/assets/procinema/2005/10/18/image_galleries/2455/-37_25.jpg
sadly she is not be-boobed enough for old Q. He would kick the poor girl out of his bet.
I prefer the newsgirl to Ms. Romania.
hm.
(imagines, ‘Romanian Old Spice: “Cabbage and Garlic” aftershave)
if all people eat garlic the smell is no longer so important.
(imagines a cabdriver shoving a clove of garlic at me: “Eat this, you stop complain”)
Romanians….garlic…..something is not adding up here
Just as long as you don’t invite everyone in.
/Lost Boys
Pickled green tomatoes are the balls. There is a new burger joint near my house that provides a quarter pickled tomato instead of the traditional dill pickle slice. I am highly supportive of this.
Thanks for the article, Pie.
Libertarian philosophy is hitting the big time!
In today’s episode of the syndicated high-school sports soap opera comic strip Gil Thorp, a girl identifies herself as the school’s “token libertarian”. Where could this plot twist possibly go next? I will keep on it for you.
Maybe, some day, we can make it to “Mary Worth.”
Family Circus would be the tops
More likely Family Carcass for us.
That’s a pretty awesome shirt
Good thing to wear to parent teacher conference.
Not me.
Ida Know
“Down at the bottom is the Family Circus, just waiting to suck”
That’s obviously a tranny since there are no female libertarians.
Oh come on dude, don’t nobody wanna be drinkin’ blood from some skank-ass hoe.
Well…. I just think you would enjoy food more if you knew…
https://twitter.com/officialmcafee/status/960174884096790533
McAfee should have been the nominee
i’d love to get some sincere LP advocate pinned into a chair and say, “what are the top 3 policies you think libertarians can influence in a better direction which other parties fail to do”
I used to think “ending the drug war” was one of those top-3 issues. But instead it seems to have turned into ‘simply ride tide of weed-legalization’ that has already happened w/o libertarians. Its not really about the “liberty”-aspect of reducing federal + state laws that are used to criminalize people, its more about the “hey isn’t it cool you can get high now”? Sure, but how exactly does that make you different from democrats?
“Reforming immigration” wouldn’t be there either. Instead it would simply be “stopping the bad shit that anti-immigration people want to do”. They don’t seem to have any particular vision about how to fix the system, but more just a broad-based ‘pro-immigration’ stance which has no real policy specifics behind it.
and their posture on economic liberty is similar: its not about shrinking leviathan, its about “balanced budgets”
it feels more like ‘watered down versions of the left and the right’, rather than any coherent and vigorous alternative
I’m surprised they don’t highlight the whole “ending the surveillance state” thing more. i think they throw it in there as a ‘that too’ thing but it doesn’t seem to be top of the list.
I just don’t see anything they talk about ever being “this is an issue that has to change now” on X or Y.
Its more like “we take a little bit from team blue, a little from team red, and that’s our pitch”
I think you’re right. For the most part the only thing that the more visible libertarian voices talk about anymore is liberal immigration and trade policies. Which are important in economic terms, but aren’t really related at all with reducing the size and scope of the state. They seem more like neo-liberals than anything
they’re also not differentiators. their spin on immigration and trade isn’t distinctly *different* from those of either team blue or red. (perhaps skipping past the fact that team red has mostly abandoned ‘free trade’ talk)
in either case, the issue is just ‘more in this direction’ rather than ‘that direction’, but not a completely different philosophical choice.
*which is, btw, the thing that made Ron Paul so exciting for many as a potential presidential candidate. whether you agreed entirely with his hardline positions on x or y, there was little doubt that he was a complete sea-change from the existing political views.
https://www.thejacknews.com/politics/libertarians-chance-success-winning-from-center-not-extreme-far-right-left/
They’re dubbing their unoriginal ideas as ‘libertarian centrism’.
TW: This site just screams “Please Koch Brothers, give us some money! We’ll smear all the right people! Please.” They fucking proudly list Bill Weld as a contributor.
And yet the LP is now very friendly to the supposed commietarians.
Clears the field for more RINOs to run as “Libertarian”.
Johnson dug it out of storage and threw it away.
Anybody got a good burrito recipe? I’m making some tonight and want to do more than just plain beef and bean.
You’ll want cheese of course. Could mix in a little sausage. Caramelized onions are good or sauteed onions and diced poblano. Spice up that meat with some cumin, cayenne, chili powder, paprika, salt, pepper, etc. Add some cilantro at the end of browning.A little hot sauce or some red pepper flake. Top with some sour cream and chive after baking.
You could also add rice or diced cooked potatoes off you wanted more filler. In addition to the sour cream you can top with salsa pie just do guac. You could do bbq sauce in the filling. It’s a burrito, you can do pretty much anything.
chipotle.com
*hits the deck*
You could add some Chipotle in Adobe to the filling. Wouldn’t go too wild with it though.
Adobe is good for fiber and non-caloric filler.
Lots of ideas
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/02/burrito-recipes_n_2574611.html
I was thinking about pork, but I don’t think I want shredded pork in the link, but maybe something close that with some sliced pork instead. Thanks.
You could also use ground pork and make your own chorizo which is mostly paprika plus the spices I had listed above.
Meh, got pork in the freezer, but don’t feel like pulling out the grinder and to get ground pork or chorizo I gotta drive next town over. Besides, I want it to have a nice bite, that’s why i’m thinking slices.
Thanks. I found dinner tonight -sweet potato and avocado.
You could also get some pulled pork, brisket, or whatever from local bbq joint for filling
You should always have carne adovada on hand. Extra hot.
That sounds like really solid advice.
Sounds good. Unfortunately the folks I’ll be eating with aren’t very tolerant of spicy, I have to walk the edge of making it taste good, but having barely any heat.
Great article Pie!
OT: stock market – correction or crash?
Either way, I’m doubling down
Clearly not a crash. I’m always happy when prices drop. Hate paying more than I have to.
market was way overbought.
when there is a selloff, simultaneous to the “highest quarterly EPS growth estimates ever” ?… its probably a healthy thing.
You guys eat mullet, cornmeal fried fish, and grits? Come on ovah heah, boy. We got us a place for you at the table in Floh’duh.
I’m not sure I’ve ever had mullet?
“Hot fish”. Small fish with high oil content. They are poor people food in Florida. I don’t mind them in fish dip. Not much flavor on their own.
Interesting. I’ll have to check my local fishmonger for it.
Growing up fishing in NC and VA, mullet was caught to use as bait. Never really saw anyone eat them until I lived in the Panhandle.
Business fish in the front, party fish in the back?
Thanks for the article, Pie. I’m starting to see why my great grandfather moved to the US. 😉
Seriously, we had more dishes handed down from my maternal Hungarian great grandmother ( the Romanian’s wife), presumably because she did the cooking and passed the recipes/methods to my grandmother and Mom.
With my love of genealogy, I would like to visit Romania one day.
Well ill set a bottle of wine to age for that occasion
Woohoo! EuroGlibfest at Pie’s!
Let’s see, Hungarian woman married to Romanian man. Cousin SP?
taking the bone in your hands, ripping meat off it with you teeth and then loudly slurping the bone marrow.”
This is how I like to enjoy my enemies.
There’s a great little restaurant I like around here that is run by a Romanian couple. Everything is delicious, but most of the menu is actually a hodgepodge of various cuisines: chicken cordon bleu, spaghetti and meatballs, shawarma, wienerschnitzel, Hungarian goulash, eggplant parm. I think there are only a couple of dishes that are Romanian.
Delicious food there though.