Americans try ROMANIAN Food for the First Time | Bucharest FOOD TOUR

American couple tries Romanian food for the first time in Bucharest.
In today's video we waste no time getting our bearings while visiting Bucharest Romania. We go to a popular bakery called Luca for some famous, and affordable, Covrigi. We go to the coolest restaurant in Bucharest for a traditional Romanian meal and stumble upon one of the best Gyro's we've ever had while traveling

Bucharest is a magnificent city with so much to do and eat, thanks a million for following along on our epic year of travel!

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Hi, we're Brandon and Alyssa. We saved $30,000 to travel for a year! For the first part of our adventure we lived in our 2014 Prius for 100 days traveling from San Diego to Canada and across the trans Canadian Highway. We just Landed in Europe with no itinerary and an endless desire to eat and drink EVERYTHING! Don't forget to subscribe to see where we go next!

This video filmed in Bucharest November 2022.

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#bucharest #streetfood #europetravel #digitalnomad #heresgood #romania #romanianfood

00:00 Intro
01:12 Luca for Covrigi
03:13 Traditional Romanian Stews
06:47 Romanian Soup Shop at Ciobarie
10:47 Gyros Thessalonikis

[georgep]

I love that alot of US citiziens come and discover Romania. And i think that you guys are already in love with the people, the food and views. Enjoy and thank you for promoted my country with style !

[munchkin.o]

what a lovely couple x thank you for showing us romania x

[TipulCare]

Welcome to our country! I hope you enjoy, just ask for Romanian traditional food, and just ask for: spicy, sweet, salt you want, you will receive.

[alexandru]

If you ever decide to visit Romania again I recommend you trying these other dishes:
- Bean soup in a bread bowl: This might sound weird but it does actually exist and it's delicious. Usually it also contains some sort of smoked meat.
- Mici: Literally translates in to the ''Little Ones''. Somewhat similar to kebab, mici are a mix of different types of meats (usually pork and beef), lots of seasoning and a plus of bounciness. I've watched a lot of videos of people trying them and they seem to like it a lot.
- Sarmale: Cabbage rolls. As the name says, they consist of cabbage rolls filled with a mix of ground meat, rice and tomato paste. With sour cream, sarmale is my personal favourite Romanian food. Usually mămăligă (polenta) is served with it as well.
- Papanași: Fried doughnuts with cheese, sour cream and some sort of jam.

If you ever have the chance I'll try cozonac too. It's a delicious Christmas sweet bread and usually contains nuts or rahat (Turkish delight). My favourite Romanian sweet food.
When it comes to street food I'd recommend plăcintă (a type of ''pancakes'' that can have many fillings, usually potatoes or cheese) and șaormă (shawrma, but adapted to Romanian cuisine).
Of course these are the ''essentials'', the Romanian cuisine is much wider than this. I listed you some of the more ''popular'' dishes and the ones foreigners seem to enjoy the most.
If you visit again, I'd recommend visiting Brașov (a beautiful medieval mountain city), Sighișoara (one of the best preserved medieval cities in Europe where people still inhabit the place) and Peleș castle is a must, beautiful on the outside and astonishing on the inside. You could visit Bran Castle (also known as Dracula's castle), but people seem to be disappointed by it quite often as it's very tourist oriented and the castle in itself on the inside is meh. For a more ''pure Romanian'' experience you have Maramureș and Bucovina, both situated in the Northern part of the country. Full of picturesque churches, beautiful nature and they're considered to be the places where you can see Romanian culture at it's purest form. Speaking of nature, the whole Carpathian area is heaven if you're in to that. Many places to go for a hike on the mountains. The South-West part of the country near the Serbian border has the Danube boilers (Cazanele Dunării) with breathtaking views, often underrated by even Romanians themselves. And finally, continuing with the nature aspect you have Danube Delta, the best preserved delta in Europe where thousands of species of animals and plants live. Although, quick warning, people there use more boats than they use cars!

[annam]

This is awesome! You guys have been opening my eyes to a lot of destinations I didn’t know I needed on my bucket list.

[DukeOfTheYard]

Something to know when ordering in a Romanian restaurant: usually a dish contains only the main ingredient/component, you have to ask for any side dish or sauce that you want. For instance when you ordered the sausages they did not come with anything on the side because you were supposed to ask for whatever you wanted with them (e.g. french fries, polenta, salad, sauce, bread etc.)
If a dish includes the side dishes as well, the menu almost always indicates that. Even then, most Romanians eat meat dishes with with a salad of some sort (either made of fresh vegetables or some pickles) - in adfition to the side dish.
If you are not sure what goes with what, you may ask the waiter to recommend you something. Otherwise you will most likely end up ordering what we consider an incomplete dish which would seem dry or odd.

[cosmaremus]

I totally loved watching this video and I really love you as a couple! You are both so lovely and kind, I just can't stop admiring you two!

As a Romanian living in a less cultural city, you've made me wanna visit Bucharest too, you really gave us reasons to apreciate this country more... great video and even greater people!

[serlucian]

welcome and hope u enjoy it here! glad u visiting

[serlucian]

I will leave here some traditional dishes you might want to try, first is "mici" which is a kind of sausages grilled without the casing, you have to eat them with mustard and a beer. Second dish is "sarmale" which is cabbage rolls filled with rice and meat. A traditional desert you should try is "papanasi" which is a kind of donut that is mixed with sweet cheese before frying and once fried is topped with cherry jam and sourcream. There are some more but I wont make such a long message XD enjoy your stay

[SV-wihc]

Don't know why but your video made me miss Romania so much. The scenes when it was raining I could smell the rain in Bucuresti in October on a clean street. And the food looked amazing. While it looked like parmesan, Romanian hard/yellow cheese is so much different flavor-wise and I love the Romanian spin on all the dishes (even if people say aren't authentic). I also love Bucuresti and enjoy seeing people loving it

[ReaperChif]

Okay, so... not much of the food that you tasted was really Romanian (in the way it is considered in Romania), so I will try to provide some tips and tricks for your next encounter with our cuisine.

1. Streetfood pastries - Luca, Matei (from the apostle Matthew) and Georgi are the most popular pastry shops in Bucharest.

The general consensus is that Luca is the better and more popular one. What you should consider when you visit them are the following:
- The stuffed pretzels (covrigi umpluți, basically) that you should try: Luca Haiducesc (cream cheese, onions, ham), CovriLuca (the traditional pig in a blanket done Romanian style), Luca Picant (that you tried). There are also sweet stuffed pretzels that are also good. Always go for sour cherries as the stuffing (vișine), as it is the most traditional stuffing that you can get in Eastern Europe.

- Pies/Shtrudels - It is available in multiple pastry shops but you must have Merdenea (which is basically filo pastry with multiple layers which is stuffed with cheese - these can be hit or miss, but it is 100% traditional and you must try it) and Plăcintă Dobrogeană (Dobrogean Style Pie - usually served by the slice, they are salty cheese pies made of thin filo dough but, compared to Merdenea, they focus more on the filling, than on the airy texture of the filo pastry)

2. Streetfood and shaorma (kebap meat in pita bread) style food - Here there are 3 styles of traditional Shaorma that can be tried:

- Gyros, like you tried at Gyros Thessalonikis, which has a thicker bread and the yoghurt/cheese spread that you talked about;

- Lebanese/Oriental style Shaorma which has more veggies and focuses on the fire grilled veg (of course, there are various meats that you can choose). I prefer this style as it is harder to find good restaurants like these in Bucharest. The best place you can find that does this style is Efendi Donner, which, ironically, is just a few steps from the Gyros Thessalonikis from the City Center that you visited;

- Romanianized style shaorma - it is usually called "Shaorma cu de toate" and you can choose chicken, beef or mixed meats (but usually, beef for some reason in these joints is not as succulent and is very salty), so you should go for chicken. This shaorma cu de toate basically has tomatoes, onions, cabbage, french fries, pickles etc and comes with mayo, ketchup garlic sauce.

3. Soups - Here, you kinda missed the mark and someone should have guided you towards the traditional dishes and the right way to understand this. So:

- Supă is usually sweet/not sour and comes in both creamy consistencies as well as clear (like broth);

- Ciorbă is usually sour soup, which is runny (never creamy, but can be clear or opaque - due to the cream). Ciorbă basically can be soured with all kinds of ingredients (usually, this ingredient is called "borș" and is liquid from sour fruit or pickles).

What you tried is not quite traditional. Moreover, the Gulaș is neither 100% traditional, nor it is a soup (more of a stew). What I recommend that you try next time are the following items:

- Ciorbă de Perișoare (Meatball Soup);
- Ciorbă de Burtă (Beeftripe Soup) - if you do not like the idea of tripe, you can always go for Ciorbă Rădăuțeană (replaces tripe with chicken), Ciorbă Ardelenească (replaces tripe with smoked pork) or Ciorbă de Burtă Falsă (False Tripe Soup - which is vegetarian and replaces beef tripe with strips of pleurotus mushrooms);
- Ciorbă de Fasole cu Afumătură (Bean Soup with Smoked Pork);
- Storceag (not a lot of restaurants have it, but it is basically Sturgeon Soup);

Note: If you want soup (or basically any meal) to be spicy, the traditional way to rectify that is that you order a Green Chilly Pepper with all your meals.

4. Starters - always try aubergine salad (Salată de vinete), fish egg salad (Salată de icre).

5. Main courses and sides - Like someone said, if the meal does not specify that it comes with a side, you should always order one (Mămăligă (Polenta, but Romanians prefer it to be a bit harder), Cartofi prăjiți (French Fries), Cartofi natur (Oven/Boiled potatoes), Piure de cartofi (Mashed potatoes), Varză călită (Cooked cabbage) Salată de varză (Cabbage Salad), Murături (Pickles) etc.

With regards to main courses, you have so many options and it is hard to name them all. Some dishes that come to mind are as follows:

- Mixed grill - Basically a platter of barbequed meats - Mici (you can also try Mici at specialised street food vendors), Ceafă de porc (the neck part of the pork), Cotlet de porc (Porkchop), chicken breast, legs, sausages etc.
- Ciulama de pui/ciuperci - Basically a dish with a flower based sauce that pairs perfectly with Mămăligă and has a primary protein either Chicken or Mushrooms.
- Sarmale (can be either rolled in cabbage, which is the classic way, or in vine leafs which is less common, but still traditional);

So yeah, these are just some of the main courses that you should try.

6. Desserts. The main suggestions are basically Papanași (Doughnuts with sour cream and jam) or Clătite (basically Crepes, stuffed with various options of jams - usually the ones in season are ideal). The jams that you should try are: Sour cherry (Vișine), Quince (Gutui), Apricots (Caise), Black Currant (Coacăze Negre), Green Walnuts (Nuci Verzi), Plums (Gem de Prune sau Magiun de Prune).

So, there you have it.. Took a while to write this down, but you seemed to need a bit of advice on the matter..

[dannym]

What a nice video and what a lovely pair you are! Thank you so much for visiting, I hope you had a wonderful time in Bucharest! Please consider visiting some of the other cities in Romania, if the occasion arises.

[Alex]

Welcome to Romania, hope u had a great time in our beautiful country👋great video guys ❤️can't wait for the next one! All the best from me👍🔥🔥❤️

[aureliozeep]

I really love seeing people from outside the country who come there willingly and just enjoy our food ... great vid ... u just got a new subscriber !)))

[dragosudrea]

Mici and sarmale are a must try in your next visit in Romania

[TaviSpence]

Hi everyone, I hope you enjoyed your stay in our city. Also, if you ever decide to return to Romania I also recommend Brasov, near Bran. There you will find some great traditional restaurants like La Ceasu Rău and Casa Avram Iancu (they also deliver to your hotel room) that serve some great Romanian traditional dishes like Ciorbă de perișoare (Meatball soup) - I recommend serving it with bread croutons and Mămăligă cu brânză, smântână și ou (Polenta with Cream, cheese and egg). Very high in calories types of food but incredibly tasty.

[pacoro]

like how every single one of you vloggers dont miss to capture the cats when you see them...hihi

[OctavChelaru]

Glad you enjoyed your time here, lovely vlog. ❤

[LVTRAVELS]

It’s great exploring other places and we learn many things! ❤

[Alexgmmyt]

I am from Romania and I love what you are doing keep up the good work :))) ♡