Bucharest is not famous for its cuisine. Boring meals such as meat and roasted potatoes can be found in many restaurants. The capital of Romania is even less known for healthier, vegan-style food. However, this guide will help you find a few decent vegetarian options.
Since this is the first restaurant guide published on HealthTravelJunkie.com, I didn’t ask (nor receive) any freebies. Thus the article is totally unbiased.
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Sublimmme
Sublimmme Restaurant, close to the old town, is a really good choice for healthier vegan alternatives. The only potential negative is that many of their mains contain soy or soya milk.
Luckily, the smoothies are made with almond milk. It tastes good with a nice touch of natural spices added. Too bad there was no real green smoothie. Still, the cacao infused smoothie was nevertheless the best smoothie I had in Bucharest, at a reasonable price of around 16 Lei.
Almost all their meals are healthy choices, its hard to go wrong here (except for the soya). I chose a vegan salad – my healthiest meal that week. The mustard sauce unfortunately contained soy. I tried replacing it with a ketchup-barbecue as well as a hummus-tahini dressing, but especially the barbecue sauce (which tastes more like ketchup actually) didn’t work out that well. Thus I had to compromise with the soya-based mustard sauce to make the food more edible.
In the end it was a good meal. Prices are reasonable compared to Western European countries (and other restaurants in the Old Town area), e.g. less than 5 euro’s (22 Lei) for the salad. Also check out their homemade kombucha and raw vegan cakes.
Aubergine Bucharest Restaurant
Aubergine is an expensive gourmet healthier restaurant in the heart of the Old Town. Due to the prime location, prices are very high (especially compared to Romania’s general price levels). For this reason, I don’t really recommend eating here, unless you want to spend more money.
They’re also greedy by forcing you to tip 10% extra, even if they didn’t provide any extra service apart from bringing the food. Moreover, there was the hidden cost of 8 Lei for a piece of bread (which was actually necessary to make the food more palatable). Thus, this would further raised the price of the meal by 20%. Thus, in total you would pay 32% extra (obligatory tip included) above the price you see outside on the menu.
On a positive note, it’s at least something more unique in Bucharest, not a typical junk food, or bland Romanian meat-based meal. The few vegan and healthier choices looked decent on the menu.
I chose the vegan eggplant pot. Basically a pan of hummus, covered with chopped peppers tomatoes and eggplant. The hummus was a somewhat tasteless – grocery store hummus taste better. It did help to reach my daily vegetable consumption goal, but felt like a rip-off for that price. They have wifi and serve meat-options as well.
Mr CigKofte
Cig Kofte is a traditional Turkish food very popular in cities like Istanbul. It used to be made with minced meat, but nowadays gets prepared 100% vegan due to legislation introduced to improve food hygiene. The “meat” filling is now made with Bulghur wheat. They add a pomegranate sauce along with lemon juice for flavor. Vegetables in this wrap include lettuce, tomato and sweet peppers. Its a much better choice than the typical kebab and falafel wrap kiosks in Bucharest. The only concerns are the extra carbs in the sweet pomegranate reduction, and the white flour used for the thin wrap.
They also sell Turkish drinks like Ayran Yoghurts (not vegan) and Salgam purple carrot juice (with the bitter “acquired” taste). As well as another Turkish vegan snack: icli cogkofte (with the nuts and veg filling).
Stop by for a quick and reasonably healthy snack in central Bucharest.
Coolinart
Coolinart health restaurant is a little far from the Old Town. Still, it’s an option if you’re looking for a light vegetarian or vegan meal at a so-so price.
I can’t say that their food is anything special. However, it’s a sincere attempt to provide healthier options in Bucharest, where healthy food lag far behind Western Europe.
They unfortunately didn’t have their smoothies in stock, which was supposed to include one or two green options.
Another negative is that the light meals are more for women, instead of men who train hard and need more fuel. For example, quiche – typical female snack. The hamburgers seemed to mostly contain soya, along with cheese (which you could leave out if you’re vegan). There are basic vegetarian salads, plus chicken salad, for meat-eaters. For breakfast, there’s a selection of omelets, and even a 100% vegan omelet.
To conclude, nice place to try for health-conscious women who live in this area, around 20 minutes walking from Old Town Bucharest.
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Rawdia
Rawdia is a small vegan restaurant, quite far from the Old Town. But I wanted to see another neighborhood in Bucharest, so I stopped by. Typical of Bucharest’s healthier restaurants, I wasn’t impressed. Bucharest definitely doesn’t have the same hipster vegan sort of culture that you’d find in e.g. Berlin.
There was no green smoothies, apart from something blended with Spirulina, which isn’t impressive. The food selection was all pre-made (earlier on that day) and in display in a fridge. It’s generally small portions of raw food at high prices. Plus, not that easy translating the Romanian ingredients to English. The hamburgers which they had in stock that day, used soy as base.
I bought a tiny 10ml wheatgrass shot for 10 Lei. Nice idea but too expensive and too little to make a real difference to your day’s nutrition needs. My meal was some kind of raw vegan sliced pumpkin roll filled with nuts and some vegan mayonaise (24 lei). Tasted very good, and was very healthy, but too small to be considered a meal. So this place is for local women who want to hang out and spend some money. Romanian women are generally thin, thus they probably appreciate the small nutritious portions here.
However, to conclude, it’s not really worth it for tourists to visit (especially if you have to travel from the Old Town neighborhood). Rawdia apparently has a few branches throughout Romania
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Rio Juice
Rio juice is in the same neighborhood as Rawdia. They have a good selection of Brazilian smoothies, smoothie bowls and juices. It felt like I was briefly back in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, getting some healthy fresh fruit and spinach in the form of a green smoothie bowl (not otherwise easy to find fresh green smoothies in Eastern Europe). I’ve had very mediocre smoothie bowls up to now, but this one was well-presented and like a healthy tasty meal on its own. With no added dairy or sugar.
Prices range from 15 to 19 lei. Very respectable if you compare it to Western European prices. Acai bowls were 18 to 23 Lei. Taste-wise RioJuice is as good as the smoothie bars in Rio, although of course, smoothies are generally much more expensive in Europe than in Brazil.
This was the healthiest fresh smoothies I found in Bucharest. Too bad its a little far out, or I’d head there every day.
Aloutte Restaurant
Alouette is not specifically a Romanian cuisine restaurant, and only has a small vegan section on the menu, with mediocre choices. For example vegan black risotto. In the Split (Croatia) guide, we explained that black risotto is normally colored black with real squid ink. This is obviously not the case here – instead black rice is used. Some sliced peppers, carrots and cashews were added. It was a so-so meal, nothing special at all. Plus, there was no health smoothies, thus this restaurant barely belongs in this guide, and I don’t recommend it to vegetarians/vegans.
A Few More Bucharest Restaurant Tips
Romania’s traditional diet is quite meat-heavy, e.g. the small Mici sausages, almost identical to the Cevapi of Serbia. Moreover, Romania is known for its soups, including tripe soup – which many Westerners would consider weird. But luckily there are good vegan/vegetarian soup alternatives at Soup Up (around 15 to 20 minutes walking from the Old Town). These soups are more popular in colder winter weather.
Generally, the local cuisine isn’t that mouthwatering to your typical Westerner with refined taste (even if you eat meat). Here and there you’ll find something good, albeit pricey, at one of the upmarket restaurants in the Old Town. A few of these restaurants have English tourist menus, and some a vegan choice or two, as well. But nothing special.
For example, Chimi Changa can prepare you a vegan “burrito” with falafel (instead of minced meat). The only small difference between the vegan burrito, and a kebab shop falafel wrap, is they use Barbecue sauce in the burrito (while Tahini is used in a wrap). Maybe try the Guacamole with nachos instead.
Moreover, fermented Kefir milk is an extremely popular drink in Bucharest, and quite cheap as well. For only 1 Lei extra, you can buy free range kefir instead of normal factory farmed. However, this doesn’t mean it’s a dog’s life for these dairy producing animals. I tried the goat milk kefir as well – a great variation to cows milk, with a sharper, slightly more sour and creamy taste. Similarly, sheep milk kefir was another eccentric choice. It tastes very similar to cows milk. Except it feels weird drinking the milk of a sheep.
Ki-life, 15 minutes north of the Old Town, albeit a little small, is the best health shop in central Bucharest to buy a few natural wholefood ingredients to prepare a meal in your Airbnb accommodation. Get $40 discount off your first stay on Airbnb by signing up here. (You’ll also get $15 credit for an Airbnb Experience).
Find a few extra (more distant) Bucharest Restaurant options on the HappyCow app, which I didn’t have the opportunity to write about for this Romanian vegetarian guide.
Do you have any further recommendations for Bucharest healthy or vegetarian/vegan restaurants? Post your suggestions or questions below in the comment section!