What are the best-known traditional Moldovan dishes?

Plăcinte pastries, zeamă chicken soup with homemade noodles, mămăligă polenta with sheep's cheese and sour cream, sarmale, colțunași dumplings and răcituri jellied meat. These are the dishes you will meet most often at a Moldovan table.

What is Moldovan zeamă?

A chicken soup with homemade noodles and lovage, soured with borș. It is one of the staples of Moldovan cooking, and locals will tell you it doubles as a hangover cure.

Which wine goes with Moldovan food?

The local rule is simple: heavy food with red, light food with white. A Fetească Neagră works beside sarmale and meat, a Fetească Albă or Viorica beside pastries and cheese. Safest of all, let your host choose.

Where can I try traditional Moldovan food?

In the traditional restaurants of Chișinău and at the table of a village guesthouse, where the cooking is genuinely home cooking. For produce straight from the growers, head to Chișinău's Central Market.

What to Eat in Moldova: 10 Traditional Dishes

Moldovan cooking is country cooking, with Romanian, Turkish, Ukrainian and Russian influences. Portions are large, the ingredients local and seasonal, and a glass of wine is never missing. Here are ten things to try on a first visit.

Dishes

Plăcinte — thin pastry filled with cheese, potato, cabbage or apple, baked or fried. The signature dish, good at any hour.
Zeamă — chicken soup with home-made noodles and lovage, soured with borș. It is said to be a hangover cure as well.
Mămăligă — densely boiled maize meal, served with sheep's cheese, sour cream and pork crackling. Once the poor man's food; today a national point of pride.
Sarmale — minced meat with rice, in vine leaves in summer or pickled cabbage leaves in winter, simmered slowly for hours.
Colțunași — dumplings filled with cheese, potato or sour cherries, with sour cream on top.
Răcituri — meat in aspic, served cold, a fixture on the festive table in winter.

Warm polenta in a round bowl, next to a plate of cured meats and olives

Produce

Sheep's cheese — salty, aromatic, made at the sheepfold; it goes with mămăligă and with white wine.
Pickles — cucumbers, green tomatoes and cabbage in brine, part of any winter meal.

Drinks

Divin — Moldovan brandy, distilled from wine and matured in oak barrels; the country's own name for this type of drink.
Home-made wine — made on the smallholding, offered to guests straight from the cellar. Almost every rural family has its own.

Cabbage rolls wrapped in vine leaves on a white plate, with a bowl of sour cream beside them

What goes with what

The rule is simple on the spot: heavy food with red, light food with white. A Fetească Neagră sits well beside sarmale and meat, a Fetească Albă or a Viorica beside plăcinte and cheese. You cannot go wrong letting your host choose.

Where to try them

The best places are the traditional restaurants in Chișinău and meals at country guesthouses, where the cooking is done as at home. Do not miss the Central Market either, for produce straight from the growers. To understand how it all fits together, read about Moldovan cuisine.

Desserts and sweets

A Moldovan meal rarely ends without something sweet. Look for pumpkin plăcintă, fluffy doughnuts, alivenca (a cheese cake) and home-made preserves of green walnuts, sour cherries or rose petals, served by the spoonful alongside coffee. At festive times, cozonac and plaited colaci appear, baked to old recipes.

A table laid with Moldovan dishes in earthenware bowls at the Acasă la Mama restaurant in Chișinău

A note on portions

One thing will surprise you: the quantities. Moldovan hospitality is measured in full plates, and refusing food can seem impolite. Come hungry, eat slowly and leave room for dessert and for the glass at the end.