Food words in Romanian

You finally made it! You managed to arrange your vacation to one of the beautiful places in Romania! Even if you didn’t take any Romanian classes (or online Romanian classes as we unfortunately live in the COVID era which made everything working from distance and online), we provide this article in order to offer some Romanian for foreigners like yourself as far as food concerned.

You don’t need to worry, there will be some easy and basic words that will help you when you will feel hungry and you want to go to the nearest market or to hung up the phone and ask for a delivery at your door or even, if you feel like demonstrating your Romanian (food) knowledge to the receptionist of the hotel you are staying during your vacation.

As true Romanian tutors, we should mention first the verb a mânca = to eat. So, what would you say if we start with the most essential food that needs to be on your table according to many? And, we are speaking about pâine of course which means bread.

Well, it’s commonly known that Romanians love bread and the many types of it. For example, we bet that one of the first thing that you will try once you get there, will be the famous covrig, which is quite similar with the German pretzel, a salted bread with sesame seeds or large salt grains. You will find this delicios/savuros = delicious/tasty also stuffed with cârnat = sausage, or with șuncă și brânză = ham and cheese and also definitely you will enjoy the sweet version with chocolate.

Moving on, we will present you now some essential raw materials which it is possible to use in order to try your cooking skills. Let’s start with făină = flour, which is something that never misses from the shelves and cupboards of a Romanian household. The most important material for bread and cakes that are usually being made often. Then we have zahăr = sugar, and zahăr brun = brown sugar. Not so healthy but nobody can live without it! Another ingredient that the Romanians use often is the ulei de măsline = olive oil, which gives this slight of taste to all the foods.

However, let’s face the truth: As the most of the people, the same goes for Romanians. Meat has a strong presence in their table, especially of course in the holidays period like Christmas of course and Easter. Their favourite and most cooked is porc = pork. They can cook it in the oven, in the pan, in barbeques (which they love) and they combine it mostly with cartofi = potatoes and the versions of them like cartofi prăjiți = French fries or piure = mashed potatoes.

Then we have the other types of meat: vită = beef, pui = chicken, curcan = turkey, miel = lamb. Of course, besides potatoes, there are other garnitures that we would like to mention in this article like legume la grătar = grilled vegetables, or orez = rice  or simply salată = salad. Now if you like the Italian stuff, even if you are in Romania you can ask for paste = pasta and if you are more to a healthier or even vegetarian way of nutrition, order some mazăre = pea or fasole = beans or even linte = lentils.

For the finale, we kept the magical word: desert/dulce -dessert. We reassure you that in Romanian kitchen you will find the type of dessert that fits your taste and complete your mic dejun = breakfast, prânz = lunch and cină = dinner ideally.

Those were only some of the thousands of words that we hope that you will learn when you arrive in Romania and have to do with food and we really hope that you will never get to say mi-e foame = I am hungry.