Pork and rice rolls wrapped in cabbage or vine leaves and slow-baked: the centrepiece of Moldovan holiday tables and the wedding-week ritual dish across Bessarabia.

Sarmale arrived in Bessarabia through the Ottoman Empire, where stuffed-leaf parcels (dolma) had been documented in Persian cookbooks by the early 1500s. The Moldovan version stuffs cabbage or vine leaves with seasoned pork and rice and braises them slowly in a cast-iron pot with smântână. They appear at almost every Moldovan family celebration and are a key dish on the post-wedding morning, served alongside zeamă to soak up the previous night's wine. Each household keeps a variation of the recipe and the smallest sarmale in the country, the size of a thumb, are rolled at Hanul lui Hanganu in Lalova.

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