Rhomphaia Restaurant: A Fish Lunch Under a Thracian Sword in Balchik
I arrived in Balchik as prepared as any guidebook could ask for: two restaurants picked out in advance, both cooking the traditional home food of the region. Except the first one had been taken over that day by a private party, and the second still looked shut an hour after it was supposed to open - it was an off-season Saturday and nobody seemed to mind. So I fell back on the plan I didn't have.
Rhomphaia (Ромфея in Bulgarian) is a fish restaurant right on the Balchik waterfront, cooking the Black Sea classics of Bulgarian cuisine: a hearty fish chorba and small fried fish called popcheta.
The Sword, the Thracians and a Romanian Queen
The name of the place sounds like it came off a menu, but it actually came out of a history textbook. The rhomphaia was the two-handed sword of the Thracian infantry, usually 140 to 150 centimeters long; ancient sources say the Thracians used it to cut the tendons of horses and the trunks of war elephants. A restaurant named after the battle sword of the Thracian infantry now serves soup and small fried fish with lemon - the weapon could not have picked a more peaceful retirement. The name isn't as far-fetched as it sounds, either: Thracians lived on the site of today's Balchik long before Greek settlers founded the little town of Krounoi here, later known as Dionysopolis. The sign over the door reaches all the way back to the town's oldest layer.
Balchik rises from the sea in terraces; about 9,500 people live here, and its most famous chapter was written by a foreign crown. From 1913 to 1940 the town belonged to Romania, and Queen Marie of Romania had her summer residence, the Quiet Nest, built here, together with a botanical garden that is usually ranked second in Europe, right behind the one in Monaco. Balchik only returned to Bulgaria with the treaty signed in Craiova - so the town's biggest attraction is a Romanian legacy, and both countries are remarkably relaxed about it. There's a direct bus from Varna that takes just under an hour.
Chorba, Not Supa
Fish soup here doesn't go by the Bulgarian word supa but by chorba - and you can tell the difference on the plate. In Bulgarian, supa is the thin thing that opens a meal, while a chorba is a substantial dish with a serious amount of meat in it. Order a fish chorba as a light starter and you've underestimated it: it easily passes for a main course. They cook it all over Bulgaria, with freshwater fish along the rivers and sea fish on the coast, and the little bowl of hot sauce with lemon served on the side isn't one restaurant's quirk but a widespread habit - seasoning is the diner's job, not the cook's. Every corner of the Black Sea has its own take: in Romania they sour borş de pește with a fermented starter, in Turkey they smooth balık çorbası with egg yolk and lemon, and Greek psarosoupa goes the same way.
Popcheta are a story of their own. The name is a diminutive of pop, the Bulgarian word for priest, and it covers no single species but a whole crowd of small bottom-dwelling fish - in Bulgarian waters twenty-one of them go by that one name. The priestly nickname supposedly comes from a cross-shaped bone in the fish's head; it's folk etymology passed down the generations, but Bulgarians stand by it. Dredged in flour and fried, popcheta are a Black Sea coast specialty - and unlike the tiny fish we used to crunch bones and all back home in Czechia, popcheta have to be picked off the bone. The part of the catch you swallow whole is the smaller tsatsa, fried sprats.
Lunch on the Balchik Waterfront
At Rhomphaia I sat with the sea right in front of me and started, as the coast demands, with a chorba. It came with a little bowl of hot sauce and a lemon. The portion was huge, 300 to 400 milliliters at a guess, the size of Romanian soups, and there was more fish swimming in it than I expected for just under 6.80 BGN (3.20 EUR) - tender, completely boneless; the hot sauce made the soup mildly spicy and very good. Afterward I ordered the fried popcheta just as a snack, for about 13.60 BGN (6.40 EUR): the flesh was beautifully tender again, only the bones took some work. Lunch also came with a Shopska salad and a Kamenitza and, to finish, a glass of Pliska brandy. Then I carried on along the coast. The place is named after a weapon that cut the tendons of warhorses - the only thing I had to watch out for at the table was popcheta bones.
Rhomphaia
