“Hug A Romanian” day came up in my office on Dec. 1st, so we took our resident Romanian out to Transylvanian Flavour for some delicacies. He thoughtfully brought us some Romanian straw hats to wear and as another coworker remarked, the whole restaurant must have been full of Romanians because no one even did a double-take.

Turns out that, like in many parts of the world, tripe soup is common comfort food. Here it’s called ciorba de burta and comes with sour cream, rolls and serrano chili pepper. Unfortunately, it’s a meal in itself and I also wanted sausages, so I had the borscht instead.

Borscht is one of my favorite vegetarian soups, brightly coloured and hearty and this one didn’t seem to be any different than the Ukrainian versions I’ve had in the past. The perogies, on the other hand, were very different. I didn’t order them – I was torn between the kiftele (meatballs) and mititei (skinless sausages). Mămăligă was on the menu but having made it myself, I finally settled on the sausages with some encouragement from my coworker and the waitress. Deliciously juicy, they are flavoured with coriander and paprika and come with a side of mustard for dipping. And they are rich! So the plate of fries was a good balance.

The perogies were also a lot richer than I am accustomed to. Filled with yam, Friulani and Gouda cheese, then drizzled with sour cream, roasted red pepper sauce and bacon, it seemed like it might also need a plate of starch to go with.

Unfortunately there wasn’t time for the Romanian donuts, so we might just have to check back in.

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Transylvanian Flavour
2120 Broadway, Vancouver

Photo Credit: ecstaticist.

So I’ve dedicded to start a new project for dining in 2010. The tagline of this site is “Sampling the World’s Cuisine Without Leaving Vancouver” and so instead of of traipsing around Vancouver’s culinary delights in the random way I have been for the last (almost) 2 years, I am going to present my finds country by country.

I still have a bit of a backlog of reviews, so I may post those interspersed with the project and if I feel really keen, I may even post some recipes.

First stop on the grand tour: North America. Got any favorites you’d like to recommend?