What to Eat in Bulgaria: Typical Bulgarian Food and Specialties
Bulgarian cooking is honest Balkan classics: grilled meat, fresh vegetables, salty sirene cheese and a yogurt that tastes like nothing else in the world. The Ottoman Empire shaped it for centuries, so you'll find echoes of Turkish cuisine and Greek cuisine in it, along with Slavic roots and ingredients from the Black Sea. With neighboring North Macedonia, Bulgarians share a love of the grill, roasted peppers and banica. The result is easy to describe and wonderful on the plate: plenty of meat off the grill, plenty of salads and dairy everywhere you look.
The Bulgarian National Dish
The dish most often named as Bulgaria's national one is Shopska salad. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onion and a generous layer of grated sirene cheese on top - a simple combination you'll even find on Czech menus. In Bulgaria it tastes completely different, though: the vegetables have real bite, and sirene is milder and far more interesting than the block of "Balkan cheese" we buy back home in Czechia.
Interestingly, this icon of the Bulgarian table is fairly young. As the story most often goes, Shopska salad was put together only in the 1950s in the kitchens of the state tourist agency Balkantourist - the colors of the salad (white, green, red) match the Bulgarian flag. I ordered Shopska salad with practically every meal I had in Bulgaria, and it was excellent everywhere.
Typical Bulgarian Food
The Bulgarian menu is built on the grill. Ground meat ends up on it most often: the long rolls of kebabche and the flat patties of pleskavica, both made from beef and pork with plenty of spices. It all goes over charcoal, slowly and carefully, and how juicy the meat comes out is genuinely hard to believe. Chops, pork neck, skewers and sausages go on the grill alongside the ground meat. The choice is usually so wide that my best order was always a platter mixing different meats and sausages - that way I got to try the most in one go.
The second pillar is dairy. Salty sirene cheese and thick kiselo mlyako yogurt turn up in what feels like every other dish. Sirene crowns the Shopska salad and gets crumbled into banica pastry, and yogurt is the base of the cold soup tarator as well as the Snezhanka salad. With meat you'll almost always get a bowl of lutenica, a sweet-and-sour dip of roasted peppers and tomatoes.
From the slower side of the kitchen, musaka deserves a mention (the Bulgarian version is made with potatoes instead of eggplant), along with kavarma, meat and vegetables stewed together, and gyuvech, baked in the clay pot the dish is named after. And for breakfast Bulgarians like banica - pastry made of thin sheets of dough filled with sirene - or fried yeast-dough mekitsi.
What to Eat in Bulgaria
A list of the Bulgarian dishes, sweets and drinks you should taste when you visit the country:
- Shopska salad. A salad of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onion under a layer of grated sirene. The best-known Bulgarian dish and a fixture at the top of every menu.
- Tarator. A cold soup of yogurt, cucumber, garlic and dill. In the summer heat it's more refreshing than any lemonade.
- Banica. Pastry made of thin sheets of dough filled with sirene and eggs. The most popular baked good in Bulgaria - the town of Radomir even throws a festival for it.
- Kebabche. Grilled rolls of ground beef and pork with spices. One of the most characteristic things to come off a Bulgarian grill.
- Pleskavica. A grilled patty of ground meat, crisp outside and juicy inside. A Balkan classic that Bulgarians pull off beautifully.
- Sirene. Salty cheese cured in brine, made from cow's, sheep's, goat's and buffalo milk. My favorite Bulgarian ingredient.
- Bulgarian yogurt (kiselo mlyako). Thick yogurt with a pronounced sour taste it owes to the bacterium Lactobacillus bulgaricus. In flavor and texture it really is a different thing from Czech yogurt.
- Lutenica. A dip of roasted peppers and tomatoes with a pleasant sweetness. In a restaurant it comes with almost any meat as a matter of course.
- Musaka. Baked ground meat with potatoes under a yogurt crust. The Bulgarian version differs from the Greek one - potatoes instead of eggplant.
- Kavarma. Meat slowly stewed with vegetables, traditionally served in a clay pot. Honest food for colder days.
- Gyuvech. A baked mix of meat, tomatoes, peppers and other vegetables. It takes its name from the clay pot it bakes in.
- Sarmi. Cabbage or vine leaves stuffed with rice and meat. A classic eaten all over the Balkans; in Bulgaria no holiday table is complete without it.
- Sach. Meat and vegetables seared on a hot clay or cast-iron plate that comes straight to the table. It keeps your food hot down to the last bite.
- Shkembe chorba. Tripe soup seasoned with milk, garlic and vinegar. Bulgarians swear by it, especially after a long night.
- Fish soup. A thick broth full of fish, a given in restaurants along the Black Sea. In Balchik they brought me hot sauce and lemon with it - a great combination.
- Black Sea fish. Fried goby, horse mackerel or a big turbot. Fresh fish is a must on the coast, and you can pick straight from the day's catch.
- Katak. A thick spread of roasted peppers and a salty dairy product close to cheese. I had never come across it before my last trip to Bulgaria; now I wouldn't skip it.
- Snezhanka. A yogurt salad with cucumber, garlic, dill and walnuts. It's close to Greek tzatziki and wonderfully cooling in summer.
- Kyopoolu. A spread of roasted eggplant, peppers and garlic. A typical appetizer to spread on fresh bread.
- Grilled pork ear. A crunchy appetizer with garlic sauce, especially popular with beer. An unusual thing to eat, but absolutely worth tasting.
- Kachamak. Cornmeal porridge with cheese, Bulgaria's answer to Italian polenta. It's most at home in the northwest of the country.
- Kapama. Several kinds of meat layered with sauerkraut and rice, baked for hours in a pot. A specialty of the southwest, and of the town of Razlog in particular.
- Sujuk. A flat dried sausage of ground meat and a lively mix of spices. It's served in thin slices as a cold appetizer.
- Pastarma. Dried meat coated in spices, a cousin of Armenian basturma and Turkish pastırma. Perfect with wine or rakija.
- Filet Elena. Dried pork tenderloin in a black pepper crust, named after the town of Elena. Spain has something similar in lomo, Italy in lonza.
- Garash cake. A chocolate cake made with walnuts and no flour at all, so it's naturally gluten-free.
- Kurabiiki cookies. Crunchy butter cookies sprinkled with coarse sugar. Every bakery has them and they keep for months.
- Soldiers' cookies. Dense cookies made to an old recipe that came out of army storerooms. A symbol of Bulgaria's hard past that is coming back into fashion.
- Ayran. A refreshing salty drink of yogurt and water. It's a perfect match for richer food.
- Boza. A thick fermented grain drink with a sweetish taste. Bulgarians have it for breakfast; its texture usually takes foreigners by surprise.
- Mursalski tea. Herbal tea from a protected mountain plant in the Rhodopes. It's caffeine-free and credited with healing powers.
- Bulgarian wine. A winemaking tradition reaching back to antiquity, and grapes like Mavrud or Melnik that you won't find anywhere else. Definitely try more than just Bear's Blood.
- Bulgarian beer. The pale lagers Kamenitza, Zagorka and Shumensko, plus a growing scene of small craft breweries. That scene was a pleasant surprise.
- Rakija. Fruit brandy made from plums or grapes, the national spirit of Bulgaria. People sip it slowly, sometimes right from the salad course.
- Pliska brandy. A grape brandy aged in oak barrels, named after the first Bulgarian capital. One of the most popular spirits in the country.
Typical Bulgarian Drinks
If you order tea in a Bulgarian restaurant, chances are you'll get Mursalski tea. The herb from the Rhodope Mountains grows above 1,000 meters, it's protected, and the tea made from it has a pleasant sweetness that reminds me faintly of linden tea. It has no caffeine, so you can drink it all day long.
With their food Bulgarians often reach for ayran, the salty yogurt drink that balances fatty grilled dishes beautifully. The braver among you can try boza - a thick fermented grain drink whose sweetish taste and texture take a little getting used to.
Bulgaria has been wine country since ancient times and the local wine is its pride. Vines were grown here as early as the 4th century BC, and grapes like Mavrud, Gamza or Melnik grow nowhere else in the world. Bear's Blood, the one bottle everyone knows back home in Czechia, is a fraction of what Bulgarian wineries can do - every wine I tasted went down very well, and on my next trips I want to explore more local grapes.
The best-selling Bulgarian beers include the lagers Kamenitza and Shumensko - and the second of them was started in 1882 by a Czech brewmaster, František Milde. Alongside the big brands, a scene of small craft breweries is growing, and their beers are well worth trying in my book - the winner of my own tasting was a pale ale from the small Sofia brewery Kazan Artizan.
The most widespread spirit is rakija, a fruit brandy with whole festivals devoted to it. Next to it, Pliska brandy has a strong tradition of its own, aged five years in oak sherry casks.
How to Enjoy Bulgarian Food to the Fullest
- Order a platter of mixed grilled meats. The choice off the grill is enormous and a mix is the best way to taste kebabche, sausages and steak all at once. In Varna there's no better place for it than the Staria Chinar restaurants.
- Go to the local markets. In Varna it's worth visiting the central farmers' market, the fish market with catches from the Black Sea and the Blue Market, where grandmothers sell what they grow in their gardens. Count on cash; a card won't get you anywhere at the markets.
- Buy your cheese in an ordinary supermarket. The selection of sirene from cow's, sheep's, goat's and buffalo milk is wide there and the quality is high. Taste several kinds and compare.
- Try a tasting of Bulgarian beers. A good beer bar will pour you a set of small glasses from local craft breweries and write down the names, so you can order a full glass of the winner afterwards. That format won me over at The Key Beer Bar in Varna.
- Don't be shy about the appetizers. Cold and hot starters are a strong suit of Bulgarian cooking - from katak through sujuk to grilled pork ear. Feel free to build a whole dinner out of them.
- Leave room in your suitcase for food souvenirs. Sirene, sujuk, Mursalski tea or the colorful salt sharena sol travel home beautifully. I wrote a whole article about it: What to Bring Back from Bulgaria.
The Best Bulgarian Food
If I had to pick three personal favorites, then the best Bulgarian food for me is:
- Grilled meat. The pork steak they brought me in Varna on "the butcher's board" was one of the best I've ever eaten - tender, juicy and beautifully seasoned.
- Pleskavica. I went for the gourmet version with bacon and cheese, and it came out perfectly cooked, with an unbelievable flavor.
- The cold soup tarator. At Pavaj Restaurant in Plovdiv I tasted an unusual version with beetroot and it was excellent. If you like gazpacho, tarator will win you over too.
How to Say Thank You for Bulgarian Food
Bulgarian is written in Cyrillic, but you can manage a thank-you without reading a letter of it. The basic one is "Благодаря" (blagodarya) - thank you. If you want to pay the kitchen a compliment, add "Много вкусно" (mnogo vkusno) - very tasty, or the whole sentence "Благодаря за вкусната храна" (blagodarya za vkusnata hrana) - thank you for the delicious food.
And one word of warning about body language: in Bulgaria a nod of the head means "no" and shaking it from side to side means "yes" - exactly the opposite of what we're used to. So when the waiter shakes his head at your compliment, he isn't offended; he agrees with you.
Regional Bulgarian Cuisine and Specialties
The Black Sea coast (Varna)
Fish rules by the sea: fish soup, fried goby or horse mackerel and fresh catches from the markets. I treated myself to both at Rhomphaia Restaurant in Balchik, looking straight out at the Black Sea. Varna also has a savory bread of its own, Varnenski churek, which gets sprinkled with the colorful salt sharena sol as soon as it comes out of the oven.
The Rhodopes
The protected herb that Mursalski tea is made from grows in this southern Bulgarian range. The Rhodope village of Smilyan, meanwhile, is home to famous beans that get a fair of their own every October.
The southwest (Razlog)
The region below the Pirin Mountains made its name with kapama - several kinds of meat layered with sauerkraut and baked for hours in a sealed pot.
Central Bulgaria (Elena)
The little town of Elena gave its name to filet Elena, dried pork tenderloin. The meat is cured in cold mountain air and coated in black pepper.
The northwest
The typical dish of northwestern Bulgaria is the cornmeal porridge kachamak, served with cheese or with cracklings.
Interesting Facts About Bulgarian Food
- The bacterium that makes yogurt yogurt is named after Bulgaria. Lactobacillus bulgaricus was described in 1905 by the Bulgarian scientist Stamen Grigorov, and it remains essential for making yogurt all over the world. Yogurt even has its own fair, in the town of Razgrad.
- A nod of the head means "no" in Bulgaria. Bulgarians show agreement by shaking their head from side to side. When you're ordering food, it throws you off properly at first.
- Shopska salad made CNN's list of the world's 24 best salads. And yet the recipe is fairly young - according to the widely repeated version, cooks at the state tourist agency Balkantourist put it together in the 1950s so that foreign guests would have the colors of the Bulgarian flag on their plate.
- A Czech was there at the start of Bulgarian brewing. The brewmaster František Milde founded a brewery in Shumen in 1882 whose Shumensko brand is still brewed today, and he helped set up the Bulgarian brewers' union as well.
- Bulgaria is a rose-growing powerhouse. The Damask rose is grown in the Rose Valley near Kazanlak and its oil is among the most expensive in the world - the rose finds its way into food, drinks and an annual festival too.
- Dozens of festivals are devoted to food. Banica has its festival in Radomir, the village of Nikyup celebrates melons, Smilyan its beans and the town of Troyan its plum rakija.
- No Bulgarian kitchen gets by without the colorful salt sharena sol. It combines salt, paprika, savory and fenugreek, and it goes on bread, cheese and vegetables alike.
- Bulgaria still has no Michelin restaurant. The Michelin guide hasn't reached the country yet - but you'll find good food here without stars anyway.
Enjoy Bulgaria and the best Bulgarian food!
Staria Chinar: Bulgarian Cooking Where Varna's Locals Eat
In Varna I ate at almost the same place every single time - the Staria Chinar chain, named after a real hundred-year-old plane tree that still stands over its first restaurant. Five restaurants in the city, a charcoal grill, and the branch on Tsaribrod Street where I never once met another foreigner. And a pork steak, one of the best I've ever eaten.
Pleskavica: The Balkan Grilled Ground Meat Patty
Pleskavica is a large, flat patty of ground beef and pork with onion, grilled over charcoal. It comes from Serbia, where the southern town of Leskovac protects it as a trademark and grills a record-breaking one for the whole city every summer, and it's eaten across the former Yugoslavia. Bulgaria borrowed it along with its foreign name and sells it as Serbian without a hint of embarrassment.
Shopska Salad: The Bulgarian Salad with Grated Sirene
Shopska salad is the best-known Bulgarian salad: finely diced tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and onion under a layer of grated salty sirene, in the colors of the Bulgarian flag. It passes for a traditional dish, though it has little claim to the title - it was put together in the 1950s by the chefs of the state enterprise Balkantourist for tourists on the Black Sea, and it took its name from a mountain region where tomatoes never grew.
Katak: A Bulgarian Spread of Roasted Peppers and Cheese
Katak is a Bulgarian spread of soured milk and salty sirene cheese with finely chopped roasted pepper and garlic. On the menu it sits among the salads, but you eat it with bread as a starter alongside rakija. It takes its name from an old Rhodope dairy product that aged in a clay pot down a well; today's restaurant version is made in half an hour in the fridge.
Snezhanka: Bulgarian Yogurt Salad with Cucumber and Walnuts
Snezhanka is a Bulgarian cold salad of strained sour milk, cucumber, garlic and dill, topped with crushed walnuts. It is named after Snow White for its white color, and Bulgarians call it dry tarator. The state enterprise Balkantourist gave it its present form in the late 1970s, just as it did with Shopska salad.
Garash: A Bulgarian Walnut and Chocolate Cake
Garash is a Bulgarian layer cake of thin sheets of ground walnuts, egg whites and sugar, layered with a filling of heavy cream and chocolate and covered with a glossy chocolate glaze. It was invented by Kosta Garash, a confectioner from Austria-Hungary, at his hotel in Ruse; today every patisserie in the country sells it, and in Varna you'll find it at Kramer patisserie too.
Rhomphaia Restaurant: A Fish Lunch Under a Thracian Sword in Balchik
Rhomphaia is a fish restaurant on the waterfront of Balchik in Bulgaria, named after the two-handed sword of the Thracian infantry. Instead of war history it serves Black Sea classics: a hearty fish chorba with hot sauce and lemon, and small fried fish called popcheta. Lunch with a sea view in a town that spent 27 years as part of Romania.
Lutenica: A Bulgarian Spread of Roasted Peppers and Tomatoes
Lutenica is a thick Bulgarian spread of roasted peppers and tomatoes that shows up in a little bowl next to your meat without anyone ordering it. It adds sweetness and smoke. Bulgaria calls it a national dish, historians can't date it, and Brussels knows its recipe down to the last percent. I've eaten it with meat in various places around Bulgaria.
Bulgarian Beer: Kamenitza, Shumensko and the Craft Breweries
Bulgaria's oldest brewery was founded by two Swiss railway men, and one of the country's best-known beers was first brewed by a Czech brewmaster. Bulgarian beer is mostly pale lager from three big brands in the hands of foreign corporations, but a small-brewery scene has been growing alongside them for the past ten years. I tasted six of them in Varna, all on one board, and picked a winner.
Pliska: The Bulgarian Brandy Named After the First Capital
Pliska is a Bulgarian wine brandy aged five years in oak barrels, and in Bulgaria everyone calls it cognac - even though that word can't go on the label. It's named after the first capital of the Bulgarian empire, it made its name in the Soviet Union, and it shouldn't be confused with rakija. I drank it in Balchik with a view of the Black Sea.