As we’ve walked around the mad streets of Bucharest, dodging cars parked on the sidewalks, the piles of poop and their attendant shaggy, dreadlocked dogs, and driven through and through and through the more remote, muddy, rural countryside of central and northern Romanian, we have made sure to stop off at the scores of pastry stands and pastry windows (literally! windows that slide open and dispense pastries by the warm bagful) along the way.
First and always and everywhere is the chain Fornetti; in Bucharest, there’s a Fornetti window (sometimes two) on every block and people lined for the mass-produced Merdenele, Streudel, or slabs of pizza topped with ketchup. Christopher swears by their chicken liver stuffed pastry—something about the earthy saltiness and bizarre composition (a pastry stuffed with mashed innards?) speaks to him. I, however, view Fornetti as the Dominos of Sweets. Every last streudel or merdenele is uniform and greasy, baked off site, and reheated in a stainless steel oven. Of course, back in the States if a Fornetti opened up at Chestnut and Arch in Meadville, I’d be smacking my lips over a Merdenele cu Branza every day. But here? When you can find little pastry stands that bake their goods in wood burning ovens?
My favorite: Patisserie Dacia. This stand, like all true specialists, only sells 4 items: pretzels with poppy seeds and salt; strange, sugared, foot-shaped donuts; Merdenele (pastries filled with a feta-like cheese); and the blessed Streudel cu Mere (see our previous blog on the subject). No matter the time of day, there is always a line snaked down the block, people clutching their lei and salivating. I can’t walk by this stand without eating one, or two, of the just-fired-in-the-oven, half a foot long streudels—cinnamon apple goo drips from the ends of fire-charred rolled up pastry, confectioner’s sugar dusts my mouth and hands and sweater. Small-scale out-and-out gluttony (streudel inhaled right there on the sidewalk) now seems like a necessary Rite of Spring in Bucharest. The pretzels cost .6 lei (20 cents) and the streudel? 2 lei (75cents).
Yesterday, I branched out and tried a new pastry window and something called Tragon: a triangular shaped, still-warm, flaky pastry filled with drippy sweet cheese and raisins and dunked in confectioner’s sugar. I tried to parcel out my bites—nibble here, nibble there, which nibble to save for last? Yes, of yes, one with the cheese. Or one with the raisins. Or maybe just the pastry. Of course, I still had to adjust my walk away from Patisserie Dacia as I felt pulled by the yodel of the streudel….
Every now and then, Christopher and I stop at the local hotdog-wrapped-in-pastry stand that also sells a divine cross between sour cherry pie/tart/coffee cake. The bottom of this tart (Prajiture cu visine) is a dense sweet cheese custard which is topped by sour cherries and preserves. We usually fight for the last crumb of this—and don’t have to decency or patience to carry it home and eat it properly with our café lattes. Instead, once again, we piggishly inhale it on the sidewalk corner, oblivious to the car exhaust, the dog poop, and the hundreds of harried pedestrians.
The most charming window of all is up by Sophia’s school. The same cheerful woman greets us through the open window, her head topped by a hairnet and white cap, her body tied up, hygienically, in an spanking white apron. “Hello!” she says, smiling. She is the exact vision of an Eastern European Pastry Mama you might expect—sturdy forearms, perfectly applied red lipstick, hair bunned and netted, the expectant helpful expression on her face. Yet she speaks elegant English, which makes her especially qualified to help us choose between the Sweet Cheese Merdenele and the Feta Merdenele and the Merdenele cu Cascaval (a vaguely sour white cheese). She sells, by the kilogram, finger-sized puff pastries filled with cheese, sausage, or mushrooms. Here, too, are S-shaped pastry-cookies smeared in raspberry jam which Alexander attacks with great, heathenish pleasure.
Sophia, on the other hand, is obsessed with all things Covrigi (pretzels). There are specific stands that only sell pretzels and one happens to be on the walk to her school. So most days she gets a pretzel to and fro. The covrigi (like hot pretzels in the States only smaller and baked longer) are dipped half-way in either: salt, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, or onion crisps. Sophia has made a recent discovery of a circular pretzel that is pretty close to a sesame bagel—only it is softer and about the size of a life preserver. Little S is also a fan of the mammoth Pig-in-a-Blanket, and eats it sans ketchup or mustard, on her walk back from school. (A strange custom: “lunch” at Sophia’s school is called “breakfast”—so she is only too happy with the breakfast-pretzel-breakfast-pretzel/hotdog-snack-dinner-dessert daily schedule.)
On our trip to Maramures we tried one of the many versions of Placinta—deep fried and folded over calzone-style and stuffed with jam, onion and potato, or cheese. We also had some of the best Papanasi:homemade donuts coated in cherry or apricot preserves and slathered with sour cream. Also served hot.
And though this doesn’t qualify as a pastry “window,” we’ve discovered a Lebanese sweet shop that sells splendid baklava and coconut squares and a yellow lemon sponge cake topped with pistachios. Oh yes—Christopher is also a fan of their lamb pies. But the pleasures of Bucharest’s Middle Eastern offerings are for another posting.
Kerry
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