Restaurants in Bulgaria
-
A
Dream House
Although not the easiest place to find – look for the door on the left inside the small shopping arcade and climb the stairs – this vegetarian restaurant is well worth seeking out. The menu includes dishes such as grilled tofu, algae soup and various stir-fries. There’s an all-you-can-eat buffet on Sundays (5 lv) and beer and wine are available.
reviewed
-
B
Happy Bar & Grill
Varna’s home-grown, and now nationwide, chain restaurant has four branches around the city, including at this central location. The uncomplicated menu of grills, steaks and salads pulls in customers throughout the day, and the friendly waitstaff, who occasionally launch into spontaneous dance routines, certainly add to the atmosphere. There’s another branch on bul Slivnitsa.
reviewed
-
C
Pri Monahinite
[ourpick] Pri Monahinite Set in the courtyard of a little church, Pri Monahinite (‘At the Nuns’ Place’) is a classy place for roast lamb, grilled pork and other meaty offerings. It also does good salads and has an extensive wine list.
reviewed
-
D
Mehana Chiflika
[ourpick] Mehana Chiflika The enormous Chiflika is an excellent mehana with traditional furnishings, live music and a wide range of grilled meats. It’s a place for hearty eaters, and the rustic charm is only enhanced by the sight of some dishes being served up on what are essentially chipped-off tree stumps.
reviewed
-
E
Dom na Arkitekta
Dom na Arkitekta ‘The Architect’s House’ is a fine old wooden National Revival–style building with a private, leafy courtyard popular with local cats. The usual grills, steaks and salads are on the menu and it’s a restful place for a cold beer or two.
reviewed
-
F
Dreams
This excellent and very popular café on pl Stambolov is the perfect place to relax before the square’s giant gushing fountain on a balmy summer’s day. It serves surprisingly good cakes, along with numerous alcoholic and nonalcoholic drinks. There’s also a spacious upstairs hall.
reviewed
-
Dvata Petela
The ‘Two Cockerels’ is one of the cheaper places on the seafront promenade, with seating on a wooden pier perched over the rocks. Pizzas, pork chops, chicken kebabs and various fish dishes are served.
reviewed
-
G
Trops Kâshta
This branch of the dependable nationwide self-service canteen chain is the ideal place for cheap, simple food such as sausage and beans, chicken chops and moussaka; just point at whatever takes your fancy.
reviewed
-
H
Dom na Architekta
This wood-and-stone traditional tavern has great Bulgarian specialities, served in a balmy back garden in summer, moving indoors in front of a crackling fire in winter.
reviewed
-
I
BMS
Cheap, self-service, cafeteria-style chain offering simple but filling fare such as sausages and stews. There are some outdoor tables and it also serves beer.
reviewed
Advertisement
-
J
Mehana Pri Shopite
[ourpick] Mehana Pri Shopite Set in a traditional, tavern-style courtyard around a twisted, 300-year-old fig tree, this is a welcoming place with great food, including numerous kinds of freshly caught fish plus grills, steaks and some vegetarian options.
reviewed
-
Pri Fabrikadzhiyata
With a curious name that literally means ‘at the manufacturer’s place’, this somewhat posh restaurant in the courtyard of the Hotel National Palace serves an extensive range of good Bulgarian dishes and features somewhat bland live renditions of forgotten pop chestnuts on most nights. There’s seating indoors, outdoors and (when there’s enough of a crowd) in an atmospheric 18th-century house next door, which once belonged to a famous revival-period industrialist, Dobri Zheliakov. The restaurant’s prices are relatively steep, though the food is good, with the roast lamb being downright succulent.
reviewed
-
K
Manastirska Magernitsa
Set in the courtyard of a 19th-century townhouse and decked out like an old-fashioned mehana (tavern) , this is among the best places in the city to sample some first-class, traditional Bulgarian cuisine. The menu is enormous and encompasses recipes collected from monasteries and villages all over the country, with dishes such as ‘drunken rabbit’ stewed in wine and ‘quails in a nest’, as well as salads, grills, fish, chicken, pork and game options. There’s also an extensive wine list, which includes some pricey vintage bottles.
reviewed
-
L
Pri Lipite
[ourpick] Pri Lipite Easily the best restaurant in town, ‘Under the Lime Trees’ is set in the shady courtyard of a house built in 1910 for the then mayor of Burgas. It offers a huge menu of traditional Bulgarian cuisine including stewed boar, roast lamb, chicken kavarma (a traditional seasoned stew served in a clay pot) and veal-tail soup, as well as various yoghurt-based dishes (with all the milk and cheese coming from the restaurant’s own dairy). It gets extremely busy at night, and reservations are advisable.
reviewed
-
Pelelanovska Konak
[ourpick] Pelelanovska Konak This traditional Rodopean mehana may be in the back streets, across the river, but it’s well worth seeking out. Tucked inside a little enclosure, it has cosy outdoor seating and a spacious, hunting-lodge interior with pelts and antlers on the walls. The enormous menu, strong on local dishes, includes the ‘chef’s special’ satch, a riotous mixture of various meats, cheese and vegetables baked in a clay pot. Service is friendly and attentive.
reviewed
-
Dyado Liben
Astonishingly big, this traditional restaurant housed in a mansion dating from 1852 is a wonderfully atmospheric – and inexpensive – place for a hearty evening meal. Management says it can seat 100 people, all in a warren of halls graced with ornate painted walls and heavy, worn wood floors. There’s even a circular room where tables orbit a huge, column-like traditional stove extending from floor to ceiling. Find it just across the bridge leading from the main square inside the facing courtyard.
reviewed
-
Café Altanla Stoyan
For something really offbeat, check out this tiny, ramshackle café, based in the rough-hewn original home of Altanla Stojan Voyvoda (b 1767), an obscure early freedom fighter against the Turks. None of it has been beautified or restored, the left side of the house being now a rudimentary shop with vegetables thrown around, an old-fashioned scale and sometimes a cat sitting on said scale. On the right, there are a few small tables where colourful local characters drink coffee or down shots of rakia.
reviewed
-
Nazdrave Restaurant
This cosy place on the opposite bank of the river is good for an evening meal, and has a relaxing summertime terrace – better than sitting indoors when the loud and decidedly non-traditional Bulgarian pop blares from the TV. The Nazdrave is also a great breakfast nook, with crepes accompanied by local strawberry jam and, if you can handle the sourness, very thick, village-fresh ovcho kiselo mlyako (sheep’s-milk yoghurt).
reviewed
-
Restaurant Toma
This lively mehana outside the Hotel Toma has a typically large menu of traditional Bulgarian specialities, including parts of animals you might never have expected could (or should) be eaten – but never mind, the food and the atmosphere are great, with live Bulgarian (and sometimes Greek) music performed nightly, and diners weaving between tables in the throes of traditional Balkan dance. Hotel Toma guests enjoy a 10% discount.
reviewed
-
M
Shtastlivetsa
[ourpick] Shtastlivetsa Hands down the most popular place in town for both locals and foreigners, the ‘Lucky Man’ (as the impossible-to-pronounce name means in Bulgarian) has a great menu of inventive meat dishes, baked-pot specials, nourishing pizzas and (at lunchtime) delicious soups. It’s good value, considering the high quality. The service is generally good, though sometimes comically formal.
reviewed
Advertisement
-
Starata Loza
The Old Vine features eccentric traditional décor (wood carvings on the interior, wine casks sticking out of the walls) and has a big menu of inventive Bulgarian fare, plus 27 kinds of rakia (fruit brandy). The specials, such as pork stuffed with onions, sausage, mushrooms and walnut (11 lv) are expensive, but worth it. It’s on the cobblestone street opposite the entrance to Daskalov House.
reviewed
-
N
King’s Stables
The sprawling, summer-only King’s Stables, opposite the Hikers Hostel, occupies a rolling hill ending in Roman walls. Offerings range from breakfast crepes to hearty meat dishes such as Thracian gouviech (melting cheese and sausage with seasonings cooked in a clay pot). It also features that relative rarity in Bulgaria – friendly service. The restaurant has two adjacent cafés.
reviewed
-
O
Happy Bar & Grill
Big branch of the dependable nationwide chain offering a menu of fairly standard but tasty salads and grills. You can sit outside and watch the sports channels on the numerous silent TVs, or inside among the Planet Hollywood–style mess of movie posters, guitars and saxophones, while friendly, microskirted waitstaff flit between the tables. It’s packed out in the evenings.
reviewed
-
Bulgarsko Selo Restaurant
In the Spa Hotel Devin, this place does reasonably priced meat dishes, and more expensive regional specialities. The cosy folk décor is enhanced by the open oven, where you can watch the chef roasting huge, crunchy slabs of bread. The restaurant is also the definite winner of the prize for most hysterical English-language entrée title – ‘girl spittle’.
reviewed
-
Mehana Marina
A few steps up the unnamed lane running east from the bus stop, Marina is a folksy restaurant set in a courtyard planted with trees and little fountains. The menu features traditional Bulgarian cuisine such as kebabche (spicy grilled meat sausages) , as well as lots of fish dishes, grills and German fare such as bratwurst and schnitzel.
reviewed