Mămăligă is Romania's cornmeal polenta, cooked thick with water and salt until it firms enough to slice with a string. It arrives under brânză, smântână, fried egg and slănină, or alongside ciorbă and sarmale.
Where to eat it: 5 restaurants across 1 city.
Mămăligă entered Romanian cooking when maize arrived from the Americas via Ottoman trade routes in the 17th century, displacing earlier millet porridge. Through the 18th and 19th centuries it became the peasant staple and the rural breakfast, named the national bread by the writers of the 1848 generation. The modern Bucharest restaurant version uses fine cornmeal cooked stiff, sliced with a thread, and served as a side or a centrepiece under cheese and sour cream.
Common allergens: Corn
Tip from the editors. Coarse cornmeal beats fine: it holds shape when cooled. The wooden-spoon stirring matters; metal spoons drag heat away and make the polenta gluey.
Vatra on Brezoianu cooks traditional Romanian on bakestones and in tin kettles, in a 1920s Transylvanian interior next to Cișmigiu Park in Bucharest.
OrderSarmale with mămăligă; the cheese plate of Brașov sheep and Sibiu cow.
TipThe veranda opens May through October; lunch fixed menu is 45 RON.
Poet Mircea Dinescu's Lacrimi și Sfinți on Șepcari pours wines from his Cetate estate alongside modern Romanian classics in Bucharest Old Town today.
OrderThe signature sarmale; a glass of Cetate Riesling Italian.
TipThe wine list is heavy on Dinescu's own bottlings; ask the room for the day's house pour.
The 1879 Caru' cu bere on Stavropoleos serves the soul of Bucharest dining, where mici were recorded in a 1920 chef's letter to the Academy.
OrderMici with mustard and ciorbă de burtă, then papanași for dessert.
TipWalk-up queues from 12:30 onward; the upstairs hall has the live folk band.
The 1808 caravanserai-turned-restaurant Hanu' lui Manuc on Franceză serves classic Romanian plates around one of Europe's last remaining inn courtyards.
OrderMici and a lamb tochitură; the cabbage rolls feed two.
TipThe courtyard fills first; ask for a balcony table inside the U-shaped inn.
Crama Domnească sits in the cellar of the Princely Court on Șelari, the Princely Wine Cellar in Bucharest, with live folk and house wines by carafe.
OrderMămăligă with brânză and smântână; a clay-pot tochitură.
TipLive taraf music every evening; cash and card both accepted.
More cities are in research. Want mămăligă covered somewhere specific? Tell us where you want to eat.
