Remebering Bulgaria

If food is one of your criteria when choosing your holiday destination, Bulgaria is not to be missed. As I haven't been on the net, really, since last summer, here's a little post with some of the wonderful dishes we enjoyed on our gastro-holiday there last July. We flew to Varna, rented a car and drove all over eastern Bulgaria. Our first stop was the central town of Veliko Tarnovo. Here we ate better than anywhere else. If you go, do visit the Shtastlivetsa (Lucky Man) restaurant. Really good food, at the same low prices as anywhere in Bulgaria. Later we returned to Varna, which is turning into any other touristy beach destination. For the authentic Bulgarian cuisine, go inland. Here's some of what we had:

As a general trait, the menus are page after page of seemingly similar dishes. Expect to spend 15 minutes just going through the choices (e.g. one salad comes with egg, the next one is identical but without egg and has a different name). But the best way to start is to order a salad. They are base of any meal we had, and we've never tasted better tomatoes in our life. Living in Spain, that's something. I tried to copy it here.
In all the guides it says you have to try the shopska salad. We did, and it's fine. But they just had some many other interesting salads on offer. Many of which, like this with bacon, a poached egg, roasted red pepper an dbread, were a meal in themselves.
Shopska salad with roasted aubergine
Shopska with eggs.
Deep-fried potato cakes.

Croquettes
A selection of starters. We always ended up ordering much more than we could actually eat. As the salads are quite substantial, and all the starters really tempting, it's so easy to overdo your orders.
Chicken and asparagus salad. Great for the children.
Different dips. Tomato and spices, red roe, and yoghurt and dill if I remember right.
The main courses are really good as well. They are often cooked in small earthenware pots called sash. I wanted to buy some, but only found them in high-priced tourist shops.
My beautiful girlfriend enjoying stuffing herself. Even the local wine was surprisingly good.
Mushroom and potato 'yobaché' (sorry, if I don't spell the words correctly)
Chicken and cheese guyvetch which tasted a whole lot better than it sounded and looked.
Enjoying fish on a pirate ship (!) at the seaside town of Burgas.

Even the local fast food restaurant chain Happy Bar and Grill served pretty tempting dishes.

Luckily, the Bulgarians are not big on dessert. There's simply no space left after dinner. They do, however, have lots of ice cream stands everywhere for those afternoon strolls.