Skip to content

Tag: Romanian food

Pastrami & Pubs

The second and already last full day in București was used to tick off some more local food boxes. It was also the day that a large number of hashers with the same destination as I arrived, which usually means one thing: bar crawl!

I had breakfast in my hotel: rather unusual for me on any day but the last one of a stay, but since it was automatically included in my booking, I better use it! There I already bumped into another hasher from BMPH3, who had also arrived the day before. 

I skipped the coffee in the hotel—it it ever any good anyway?—to try some in the nearby espresso bar Coffee District instead. 

Today’s museum of choice was the Muzeul Municipiului București, the municipal museum. I actually had to pay more than I paid for the ticket itself to be allowed to take photos! 

After another coffee at the Sfinx Espresso Bar, I headed to the Obor Market to try some mici, as supposedly the best ones are to be found at Terasa Obor. There was a short queue, but luckily not as bad as I’ve seen in some vlogs! Simple but tasty, and that’s another one from the list!

To continue checking off food items, I set course for In House Pastrami & More for something I never realised was originally Romanian: pastrami. 

After a last coffee at the rather fancy Sloane Specialty Coffee, it was time to get to the hotel and change, in preparation for tonight’s programme…

And the evening activity was the Bucharest H3 Pre-Lube Bar Crawl!

It started at the Hop Hooligans Taproom—which I definitely wanted to visit—but I had no clue where it would lead us after that. Luckily most bars did not feature on my Wednesday itinerary, so I didn’t put my liver at risk by squeezing in all the bars on my wish list for nothing. After QP Pub, Londohome, and PaRdon Pub, we ended up at the Ironic Taproom, where I had been the night before. Well, I thought I had, but apparently the space next door was also part of it, with another thirty different beers!

Roman-ia!

A new day, a new country! It’s absurd I hadn’t been to Romania yet, considering you can’t even spell the country’s name without “Roman”! Ready to discover which local dishes and beers Bucharest has to offer!

My Ister sleeper train wouldn’t even arrive until just before noon, so I had plenty of time to take in the views of the Carpathian Mountains and the Romanian countryside. Such a late arrival had the benefit I could check in straight away and have a shower at my ibis Styles Bucharest City Center. My room even has a balcony! Although judging by the presence of an ashtray there, it might have something to do with the prevalence of smoking in Romania…

Since I didn’t pack much of a breakfast for my train ride, I enjoyed The Pulled Pork Sandwich—and coffee of course—at Meron even more. 

Time to delve into some Roman history at the Muzeul Național de Istorie a României. Here they have casts of all the reliefs of Trajan’s Column, and full-size replicas of the base and top of the column. With the Museo della Civiltà Romana now closed, this might very well be the only place where one can still see casts like this! There’s also a lot of gold in the museum, but I’m not much of a pirate…

The museum was smaller than I expected, so I already had some time to visit my first beer destination in Bucharest: the Ground Zero Beer Taproom

Another coffee at Origo, and since I still had some time left before my dinner reservation, a couple of beers at Ironic Taproom

Then it was time to start ticking off dishes of my Romanian cuisine list! Although it’s quite touristy, even experienced travellers and locals recommend Caru’ cu bere as the place to go for local food and a unique experience. Three checks in one go for me: zacuscă, tochitură muntenească, and papanași. While the main dish alone would have been enough to fill me up, they seemed to have given me a double portion of the dessert. So while every course was as tasty as I could hope for, it left me feeling quite stuffed. Maybe I should have joined the dancers when they asked me!

Then it was Beer O’Clock! No seriously, that was the name of the bar! They only serve their beer in half litres though, which is not ideal for tasting… At Tap Craft Beer next door everything was available in a much more reasonable 200ml, so I had a couple of beers there. 

The last stop for the night was the NoRoom Taproom—serving Maktoob and OneTwo beers—a place so small I first couldn’t find it, an literally no room to sit inside.