Experiencing Romania’s beautiful nature and learning about the complex Romanian history and traditions creates a good appetite. After nourishing the spirit, it’s time for a feast for the body.
From a total of 311 Romanian restaurants carefully selected in the most recent Gault&Millau restaurant guide, we’ve selected some of the very best.
They were judged by the quality of ingredients, determined by their source and seasonality, the chef’s vision and menu, the complexity of the techniques used, and the architecture of the dish. Let’s round up some of Romani’s best restaurants.
Relais & Chateaux Le Bistrot Francais, Bucharest
Photo credit: Gault & Millau
Le Bistrot Francais, the former home of Bistro Ateneu, is located in the center of Bucharest inside a 19th-century historic building that has all the ambiance of Central European aristocracy – the woodwork and works of art, the chandeliers and parquet floors, and the majestic grand piano.
From the summer terrace, you can enjoy a nice view of the old city while your taste buds take a culinary journey through a modern fusion of Romanian and French cuisine.
The menu is equally impressive, with top quality ingredients – lobster from Brittany, organic Scottish salmon, Wagyu beef. Corrèze veal with sprouts, asparagus and white wine sauce is tender and perfectly balanced.
Bogdan Alexandrescu, also known as Chef Dexter, focuses on using local ingredients and incorporating elements from traditional French cuisine. His approach combines simplicity with complexity, creating dishes that showcase the flavors and traditions of the region.
Except for a few items, the ingredients used in the menu are sourced from Romania. L’Atelier is proud to be the first Romanian hotel restaurant to embrace local producers, such as Grădina Corbilor, for their fresh and quality vegetables.
The restaurant has garnered 14 points (out of a total of 20) in the latest Gault & Millau report and ranks among the best five restaurants in Romania.
Their passion for food can be tasted on every plate. Highlights from the menu: duck breast with figs, Wolf fish with brown butter seaweed, and lamb ribs with coconut milk and aromatic herbs, not forgetting their pizza and pasta dishes that have their fans often coming back for more.
These fans are so devoted that when the scrumptious mushroom crust chicken was taken off the menu, because it changes every 6 months, they began an outcry. Baracca has fabulous desserts that can be hard to choose from, but the delicious Tiramisu is famous in the town.
The wine list is pretty extensive with good prices in order to give it a preference over beer.
Chef Paul Oppenkamp, 3 chef hats and 15 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant.
The Artist is simply one of the best restaurants in Bucharest and the country. Located on Calea Victoriei in a luxurious villa with a specific 19th-century design, the restaurant is perfect for an evening of fine dining with friends or a successful romantic date.
What makes the restaurant so refined and appreciated by many? In addition to the outstanding cuisine, you can also enjoy a range of captivating culinary presentations, such as the use of carbonic ice and water to create an intriguing mist when serving dishes at the table. Chef Paul Oppenkamp, the Dutch owner of the restaurant, delights with a spectacular menu that will leave you longing for more.
To enhance the dining experience further, the restaurant also provides a spoon-testing menu. This menu allows diners to explore a wide range of flavors and textures within a single meal. You have the option to select a fixed menu with two to six courses, each including several delectable bites.
Each spoonful is meticulously crafted to highlight the unique ingredients and flavors of the dish, presented with an artistic and delicate touch.
Chef Radu Ionescu, 3 chef hats and 15 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant.
As you enter the new KAIAMO, you step into a world of symbolism and hidden stories embodied in the beautifully refurbished pieces of wood reclaimed from demolished houses. The traditional mask displayed at the entrance is a symbol (and logo) of constant change and improvement, something that is also the drive of the restaurant itself, a drive derived from a fear of mediocrity.
Radu Ionescu designed everything as a tribute to Romania, from every decorative detail to dividing the salon into four zones that each have a view of the open kitchen: the night zone or lounge (Moldova), day zone (Muntenia), bar zone (Transylvania), and the platform zone (Maramureș).
There is also a more contained area for tasting the menu that the owner himself named Chef’s Corner, meant for family dinners or creative gatherings.
The menu is also composed of four sections: land, sea, garden, and puddings. Burning Heart is one dish that caught our eye, but we’ll leave you to discover the names of the dishes and the delights beyond them for yourself. And a little sneak peek of the desserts: white chocolate with jasmine and rose buds brought from a close by monastery.
In order to revive old-time cuisine challenges, the kitchen only works with seasonal crops so the menu changes every three months. Its back-to-the-roots concept can be seen not only in the use of stone plates but in the cutlery, tableware, and even the beautiful solid wood tables.
Chef Bogdan Alexandrescu, 2 chef hats, and 13 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant.
At L’atelier Relais & Chateaux, located in downtown Bucharest at Hotel Epoque, you can enjoy a wonderful fine-dining experience. The restaurant presents a story with Balkan roots and French techniques, which certainly impresses anybody.
Guests can look forward to a delightful culinary experience at L’Atelier Relais & Chateaux. The menu is carefully crafted to offer a wide range of options, ensuring there is something to please every palate.
Alongside the delectable food, guests can also indulge in an extensive selection of wines, thoughtfully curated to complement the flavors and enhance the dining experience.
Chef Oana Irina Coantă was named the Female Chef of the Year, having received 1 chef hat and 12.5 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant.
You can leave your bicycle, if you come with one, on a narrow street in the old center of Brașov near a little terrace in front of an old house. The interior of arched beige ceilings and red brick columns invites you to slow down and take a savory slice of the arts while sitting down at a table of good old Romanian cuisine brought up to modernity.
Chef and owner Oana Coantă literally traveled the country in a quest to unearth the buried treasures of inherited recipes that provide the original tastes.
Simple dishes put together mostly with ingredients from small entrepreneurs’ gardens are patiently cooked over a flame of passion for good and nourishing food.
Gourmet tourists will be smitten by the traditional taste of well-done cabbage rolls with grits, crispy cornmeal pancakes, sausage cooked in wine and apple sauce, and winter pie (if you end up arriving in the cold season) alongside Central European-inspired tastes. Exquisite onion soup and melt-in-the-mouth brownies are just two of them. And for soup fans, Bistro de l’Arte is the place to be as it has plenty to choose from.
The traditional drinks and wine selection pairs well with the old and new charm of food and ambiance where the service is friendly.
Chef Ioan Bebeșelea achieved 1 chef hat and 12.5 Gault&Milau points for the restaurant.
Once you find out about one of the most challenging culinary journeys that can be experienced in Sibiu, you will search for this hidden eatery on a side street near Big Square named Syndicat Gourmet. In the intimacy of what resembles a wine cellar, with its red bricks and dark brown wooden beams, you can surrender to a cozy feeling, far away from the crowded world.
The menu is shaped by the travels taken by the two owners and chefs, who brought back with them a passion for aromatic diversity, exotic spices, and a love for India. Here you will find traditional Romanian food, with seasonal ingredients supplied mostly from the local market, reinterpreted in a bold manner with Indian spices.
The result of this fusion creates an unexpected tasting experience and some interestingly named dishes such as tarragon lemonade, which is surprisingly delicious and refreshing. Other suggestions our reviewers say are not to be missed: sweet-sour seabuckthorn pie, beetroot brownie, garlic cream soup, beef tongue with Mirabelle sauce, and duck breast.
The service is quick and pleasant and the menu has vegetarian, vegan, and gluten-free options.
Chefs Vlad Napar and Alexandru Napar achieved 1 chef hat and 12 Gault&MIllau points for the restaurant.
Dei Frati is the home of perfect homemade pasta in the beautiful city of Brașov. The best Italian recipes have been brought here by the two passionate brothers (and owners) all the way from their training journey in the mother country of pasta and pizza.
But these two are not the only delicious foods that stand out among other Italian menus: antipasti, risotto, and tiramisu complete the Mediterranean experience with living memories of aromatic delights.
A good chef lets his hands guide the number of ingredients for the recipe and dough texture, just like the Napar brothers do. Our reviewers recommend tortellini – simply the best they ever tasted, fettuccine with spinach and shrimp, the best carbonara outside of Italy, gorgonzola ravioli with pear butter and sage, and last but not least Monte Cimone, a special dessert.
Dei Frati offers seafood, Italian, Mediterranean, European, Tuscan, and Central Italian cuisine. It is of course vegetarian-friendly with vegan and gluten-free options. The pleasant ambiance is enhanced by good service, and booking in advance is preferred as it is quite small and popular.
This “piece of Italy”, as some customers describe the place, is nicely decorated with wood and stone, and the bathroom is something else!
Anne Marie Rosenberg was awarded the Regional Chefs of the Year, received 1 chef hat and 12 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant
This story started when Anne Marie Rosenberg spotted a vineyard and farmhouse in disrepair, with doves circling above, from the window of a bus while on holiday on the Black Sea coast.
Without being able to speak Romanian, she went back to find the place and so began her grape-producing and culinary journey that our senses rejoice in today. Just as wine and food complement each other like well-harmonized colors on canvas, so do the rustic and modern touches in the décor at Clos des Colombes.
Not entirely French or Romanian but inspired by them both, the refined dishes that almost create themselves complete Anne Rosenberg’s vision of offering an enchanting experience to every guest.
The wine list is exquisite as Anne Rosenberg is a professional taster who comes from a long line of wine producers. A tasting tour could look like this: White Terra from 2009 paired with shrimp muffins, catfish canapés, and an original Delta flatbread with secret ingredients; a soft Sauvignon from 2010 accompanied by a mini baguette with goat cheese au gratin, prosciutto local asparagus and soufflé omelet; 2013 Pinot Noir with crispy chicken wings and flatbread, confit vegetables, and asparagus cream; 2009 Terra Rosa, coupage from Cabernet, Merlot, Black Maiden, and Shiraz, paired with turkey lasagna, rice, olive, and confit tomato muffin.
A dessert like lavender ice cream or cherry clafoutis is more enjoyable accompanied by a 2008 Sauvignon.
Chef Henrik Sebok achieved 1 chef hat and 12 Gault&Millau points for the restaurant.
The best restaurant in the town of Târgu Mureș has a well-balanced décor of minimalism and art nouveau that sets a perfect ambiance for fine dining. Seating placed near large windows gives you the feeling of eating outside in pleasant sunlight and under garden trees.
Before you take a sensorial journey to France, USA, or Romania with dishes that look like pieces of art, the sommelier can take you through some stories of the wines that he knows so well. The wine cellar has a large selection with 350 labels carefully chosen to match the menu.
Most appreciated by reviewers are: pork tenderloin with roasted onion glaze, mushroom cream soup, French onion soup, New Zealand mutton chop, sea bream with asparagus and rosemary potatoes, Belgian black and white chocolate mousse, and in-house ice cream, but many more are waiting to be discovered.
Dish at Privo Restaurant; Photo credit: Hotel Privo
In assessing restaurants, the Gault and Millau Guide judges first take into consideration the menu, which makes up 70% of the score, while the service, atmosphere, design, and price-quality ratio make up the remaining 30%.
The chefs were rewarded for their authentic voices that transcended the recipes of Romanian core taste. We would be happy to learn about your Romanian culinary experiences.
Want to learn more about top Romanian restaurants and chefs? Check out our interview with rising star Chef Raul Vidican of Roca Bruna.
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