Off the eaten path: Discovering slow food, slow travel and slow living in Bulgaria

I’m waiting at the gritty Kulata checkpoint on the Greek-Bulgarian border, as a young, open-faced guard inspects my Australian passport. He enquires about my intentions in this overlooked corner of the Balkans. “We’ve come to eat!” I tell him. “Can I join?” he says with a laugh, stamping my page.

At the easternmost edge of Europe, Bulgaria is a curious creature. While its southern neighbor Greece gets all the tourism glory, very few travelers make the journey to taste Bulgaria’s indigenous wines or the delights of a flaky, well-stuffed banitsa pastry.

This is not my first jaunt to Bulgaria. In my backpacking years, I once arrived on a smoke-belching overnight bus from Istanbul to hike its Central Balkan mountains. This time, I’m traveling on a Eurail railway pass, taking the slow train through to the capital, Sofia, watching as guards in peaked military hats wave the train through pretty, vine-covered stations.

In Sofia, I trade euros for worn notes of Bulgarian lev, and the alphabet switches from Greek to its northern sibling, Cyrillic. I ask Ekatarina Terzieva, owner of slow-food travel company Slow Tours, for her recommended must-eat Bulgarian dish. “Kiselo mlyako (Bulgarian yogurt)”, she replies instantly. “It’s a powerful antioxidant. And it makes you stay younger for longer.” Sold.

And Terzieva’s essential food souvenir? She suggests Bulgarian honey, which has been produced since Thracian times, 5th century BCE, and chubritsa, a peppery herb usually mixed into a holy trinity spice mix with paprika and salt called sharena sol.

“The clear spirit is distilled from fruit and found throughout the Balkans. It’s offered at the start and the end of the meal—sipped, not slugged—and Staria Chinar’s heavenly apricot rakia smells like summer.”

Set up to show village life, Ekatarina’s food tours are reconnecting  younger Bulgarian city dwellers with the traditional foods of the villages; many of which were abandoned after the overthrow of the Communist government’s 44-year rule, in 1990. “Most people over 65 have this knowledge, but we need to share it with younger people to save it,” she says. 

Stretchy pants on, I’m ready for five days spent savoring Bulgaria’s cultural food scene, starting at Sofia’s top rustic restaurants—the century-old Pod Lipite (translating to Under the Linden Trees) and the allegedly haunted Staria Chinar (The Old Plane Tree).

Pod Lipite makes the trifecta of Bulgaria’s best-known cheeses: A mildly tart, cultured kiselo mlyako yogurt made from its own certified organic cow’s milk;  a brined, feta-style sheep’s cheese called sirene; and the yellow kashkaval cheese common on pastries and pizza. Meanwhile, Staria Chinar’s eight-hour, slow-roasted lamb is so popular that diners are willing to navigate the 103-year-old house’s treacherous stairs, which brought its previous resident (now the restaurant’s spectre) undone. 

After cheese and yogurt, rakia is next on the podium of celebrated Bulgarian fare. The clear spirit is distilled from fruit and found throughout the Balkans. It’s offered at the start and the end of the meal—sipped, not slugged—and Staria Chinar’s heavenly apricot rakia smells like summer.

Bulgaria’s other culinary icon, the shopska salad, appears on every table—no exceptions. With green cucumbers, red tomatoes and grated sirene, it’s no coincidence that these are also the colors of the Bulgarian flag. Invented during the Communist period, you can almost hear the bureaucrats saying: “How can we call ourselves a nation, without a national salad?”

Chic, but no less Bulgarian, Cosmos restaurant is the serial winner of the city’s top food scene awards. “We cook authentic Bulgarian cuisine in a modern way,” chef Vladislav Penov tells me. 

Like Ekatarina, he wants to preserve Bulgaria’s food heritage, drawing his produce from farms and small producers mostly within the Rhodope Mountains, which stretch across southern Bulgaria and parts of Greece. Most special is their cherni vit, a rare, prized sheep’s cheese colored by naturally-occurring green mold. Historically made in only in the village of Cherni Vit, it was rescued from the brink of extinction by Slow Food representatives in 2007. 

Cosmos is also a leading innovator in fermentation, its own lab experimenting with sourdoughs, vinegars and koji, a fungus used in pickling, soy sauces and cured meats. According to Penov, Cosmos is the only place in the world where you can try koji-fermented coffee. 

“The word ‘aylyak’ is particular to Plovdiv. Borrowed from the Turkish word for ‘idleness,’ but without the negativity, it means a state of delight—of living life slowly.”

From walking Sofia’s street markets to visiting the gold-domed St Alexander Nevsky Cathedral and on to our boutique art hotel, Oborishte 63, I could easily settle for the hotel’s omelette for breakfast. But on Penov’s recommendation, I’m going full Bulgarian with banitsa, its flaky pastry stacked with eggs, feta and yogurt. In the fragrant HleBar bakery, its leek-and-cheese banitsa is an elegant twist on the breakfast of the nation. 

Stashing the rest of the pastry in my bag, I head to Sofia’s train station with its hard Brutalist lines and vast, Soviet-style mosaic. The doors on the Plovdiv-bound train snap shut right on time. We’re heading 90 miles (150 kilometers) southeast to Bulgaria’s second largest city, chugging through a corridor of sunflowers between two mountain ranges.

Lulled into a rhythm of reading, chatting and passing red-roofed villages, we pull pieces of banitsa from oil-soaked bags. Don’t fight the grease; that’s why it tastes so good.  We coast past a horse and cart, and a railway worker—framed perfectly in the soft morning sun—sees my fellow traveler and photographer Sarah Pannell raise her camera, and blows her a kiss. 

One of Europe’s oldest cities, Plovdiv has morphed from a 6,000 year-old Neolithic settlement to a lively university town. It’s easy to get lost in the district of Kapana, a car-free knot of cobblestone streets that translates to ‘The Trap’. I wend between cafes and craft beer dens, a 14th-century mosque and Turkish café, giant murals and tiny galleries. 

A decade ago, this area was all closed shops and deserted warehouses, says Plovidiv restaurateur Raycho Markov of Pavaj restaurant, but it has been saved by its crowning as a European Capital of Culture in both 1999 and again in 2019.

More than half the produce used in busy Pavaj is from Markov’s father’s local farm, he tells me, showing photos of his family working at harvest. Baked dill-flecked peppers are served alongside golden pork schnitzels and Black Sea turbot cooked in goose fat. 

At one point, we’re served a plate of sliced pink tomatoes—sweet, thin-skinned, precious. These famed Kurtovo Konare tomatoes are so fragile, they barely withstand travel from the villages just outside Plovdiv where they’re grown. For some of the world’s best tomatoes, you must come to the tomato; the tomato does not come to you.

I taste Gergana, a white grape grown in the Danubian Plain to the north, and a baklava cheesecake that nods to Bulgaria’s Turkish influence. To finish, Markov serves rakia speckled with 23-karat gold and his newest venture—pet nat wine. 

Afternoons in Plovdiv are best spent wandering the Old Town’s Orthodox churches, second-century Roman theatre, and restored 19th-century townhouses built in the ornate, Bulgarian Revival Period as the country chafed under Ottoman rule. With cars forbidden on its steep, cobbled streets, this walk through millennia forces me to slow down and amble, rather than stride. Little do I know, but I’m being lulled into a Plovdiv state of mind. 

“Truffles? Foie gras? Along with saffron and porcini mushrooms, it turns out Europe’s lowest-paid country is producing a welter of luxury foods.”

My final Bulgaria dinner is at Aylyakria restaurant, also in The Trap. The word ‘aylyak’ is particular to Plovdiv. Borrowed from the Turkish word for ‘idleness,’ but without the negativity, it means a state of delight—of living life slowly.

“Everyone says people from Plovdiv are ‘aylyak’,” says owner Rumen Stoykov. “Very calm, very relaxed, enjoying life.” 

Dinner kicks off with the charmingly obligatory rakia—but flipped on its head. “Barrel-aged rakia was an old-fashioned drink but it’s becoming popular in cocktails,” says Rumen, handing me a rakia sour. Made with quince rakia, it’s softened deliciously with pear syrup and cardamom bitters. 

Chef Lachezar Kisyov sends out platters of two classic dips—red pepper and tomato lutenitsa, and katak made from brined cheese, yogurt and garlic. He then tears apart the cloud-like pogacha bread, handing a piece to each of us.

The highlights of this lavish table are a hard cow’s milk cheese infused with truffles, a savoury éclair filled with foie gras pâté, and tasting tamianka, an aromatic white wine grown in the Struma River valley, west of Plovdiv on the North Macedonian border.

Truffles? Foie gras? Along with saffron and porcini mushrooms, Europe’s lowest-paid country is producing a welter of luxury foods. Most are exported to western Europe under private labels, but all are best tasted in their country of origin, and at a smidgen of the price. 

I can’t wipe the smile off my face as Kisyov grates a truly lavish amount of truffle over slow-cooked lamb shanks. He’s grinning too, knowing he’s just wowed the table.

Every meal, from Sofia to Plovdiv, has been governed by generosity and pride in Bulgaria’s late summer produce, wrought into dishes influenced by empires and eras—from Thracian to Roman, Byzantine and Soviet. 

Yet despite its wealth of food and history, Bulgaria is still far from the beaten and eaten path. Travelling slowly by train and foot, I’ve witnessed a masterclass in European history, from stone age to new age, and, along the way, met passionate chefs and producers who are joyously bringing Bulgarian recipes and produce to the table. 

And I’ve learned that life is best enjoyed like rakia—sipped slowly, and savoured fully, in a state of ‘aylyak’.

Writer and photographer were hosted by Eurail, eurail.com 

****

Adventure.com strives to be a low-emissions travel publication. We are powered by, but editorially independent of, Intrepid Travel, the world’s largest travel B Corp, who help ensure Adventure.com maintains high standards of sustainability in our work and activities. You can visit our sustainability page or read our Contributor Impact Guidelines for more information.