8 Romanian summer foods to try this season

Taste of a Romanian Summer: the seasonal foods that bring everyone together

There’s something magical about summer in Romania, that you can't replicate somewhere else. It’s not just the mountain air, the golden sunflower fields, or the villages glowing in soft evening light. It’s the food. Whether you're driving through the countryside or staying in a local guesthouse, summer in Romania is best served on a plate: colourful, homegrown, shared with loved ones, and soaked in sunshine. Let’s take a journey through the most beloved Romanian summer foods: 8 foods and drinks that aren’t just fuel, but summer rituals that build warm memories passed down through generations.

1. Watermelon (pepene verde), the official dessert of summer

Every Romanian summer ends with sticky fingers and sweet watermelon juice running down your chin. It’s the iconic seasonal treat that is bought from roadside stalls or farmers' market, gets sliced open in the garden in the heat of lunch time, or is brought cold to the dinner table after a long barbecue. No summer meal is complete without it. Pro tip: Romanians sometimes eat it with a slice of salty cheese or even BREAD for contrast. Don’t knock it till you try it!

2. Corn on the cob (porumb fiert sau copt)

Corn season starts in mid-summer, and it’s a staple snack across Romania. Whether it’s boiled or grilled, sold on the street corner or prepared at home during a backyard gathering, sweet corn is our classic comfort food. The smell alone evokes long childhood evenings spent outside until the sun disappears...and it’s one of those easy summer meals that takes no effort but delivers full flavour, especially when paired with butter or a sprinkle (or should we say sparkle) of salt. 

The boiled version is the most popular in Romania, and if you'd like to try it, simply add whole or cut in half corn cobs to salted water and simmer for 20–30 mins until golden. The secret however is to add the corn leaves to the bottom of the pan, as well as on top of the corn and then cover it with a smaller lid which fully sumberges the corn in the water. Guaranteed it's going to deliver a much more flavourful taste! 

3. Tomato, cucumber & cheese salad (salată de vară)

This might be the most Romanian of all summer salad recipes, and it's SO SIMPLE: it includes only juicy tomatoes (from the garden), crisp cucumbers (also from the garden), shallots (guess what, from the garden too!) and crumbly white cheese (telemea from the shepherd in the market), all drizzled with a touch of sunflower oil and white wine vinegar. It’s our go-to easy summer lunch or dinner, often thrown together in minutes to accompany grilled meats or eaten on its own with bread. Locals will tell you: nothing beats the taste of Romanian tomatoes in August, and that moment when eveyone is fighting for the last piece of vinagrette-soaked bread (yum!). If you'd like to give it a try, here's a quick guide on how to prepare it:

• Chop 2–3 large ripe tomatoes and 1–2 cucumbers
• Crumble over a generous handful of telemea or feta-style cheese
• Add thin slices of shallots
• Dress with sunflower oil and a splash of white wine vinegar
• Serve with crusty bread or as a side to grilled meats

4. Roasted aubergine dip (salată de vinete)

Romanian aubergines are a thing of beauty - smoky, tender, and blended into a soft dip with oil, lemon, tomatoes and shallots and optionally mayo too (think babaganoush, but fresher!). This dish is almost a summer ritual in itself, as usually families gather to roast piles of aubergines on open flames, peel them, and store portions in the freezer for winter (although let's be honest, many of those don't usually make it till winter!). If you’re lucky enough to be around during the prep, you’ll not just eat well, but you’ll also feel part of this process.

The classic recipe has some non-negotiable steps which unfortunately so many recipes nowadays prefer to skip or replace with faster and more convenient tools - but it just doesn't deliver the same taste. For example, aubergines need to be roasted directly on fire or grill until blackened and soft - NOT in the oven. Then, they need to be covered with kosher salt (i.e. coarse grain salt) and a lid, and left to cool down a little on their own. Once they're cool enough to touch them, they need to be peeled carefully, trying to not break the skin (which shouldn't happen if the aubergine was grilled enough). The secret though is in the next two steps: first, the aubergines shouldn't be washed too much - just enough to remove any unwanted seeds, as all the delicious smoky flavour would be lost; and secondly, they should be chopped roughly with a wooden knife to preserve their flavour and avoid over-mushing them too much. You want to really feel the texture of the aubergines - so forget about using any type of blender or mixer for this step! Lastly, the chopped aubergines are mixed with oil, salt, a splash of lemon juice (stirred again with a wooden spoon), then chopped shallots and tomatoes are added-in for a fresh and tangy feel. The dip is usually served cold over toasted bread, as a main for breakfast, or as lunch and dinner appetizers.

Of course, you can ignore the steps above and roast them in the oven, chop with a blender and skip the tomatoes and onion - but that wouldn't be a Romanian dish! 

5. Roasted and stuffed peppers (ardei copți și ardei umpluți)

The short and tiny pale-yellow peppers (similar to Turkish varieties) are another Romanian summer staple, and you'll find them in two iconic dishes: a cold roasted pepper salad that accompanies most summer meals, and stuffed peppers served as a full comforting lunch.

For the roasted pepper salad, the peppers are charred whole, directly on the grill or flame (just like the aubergines), until the skin blisters and blackens. The same process with the Kosher salt needs to be followed prior to peeling, to ensure the pepper skin is not broken. And when peeling, just as above, there is no need to overwash or even to cut them open to take out the seeds, as this will diminish the smoky flavour (you can get rid of the seeds pretty easily when ready to be served, just by making a small cut in the bottom, and the juice with seeds will slide right out). Once peeled, place them in a shallow dish that has a lid, and mix them with a bit of pressed garlic and white wine vinegar which will combine perfectly with the smoky pepper juice into a delicious vinagrette. For the best taste, chill them before serving - the longer they sit, the more flavour-infused they'll be!

As for the stuffed peppers, this one's a warm comfort dish for the colder and rainy summer days. And to make this you will need a few more ingredients like ground pork or beef mixed with rice, sauteed onion, dill, parsley, salt, pepper, and tomato paste as you please. The fun part here is in stuffing each pepper individually with the filling made out of the ground meat, sauteed onions and rice, and placing them standing up into a pot filled with a mixture of tomato sauce, bay leaves and water. The key is to add sauce to cover at first, then let it decrease and thicken as you simmer the peppers on low heat. This dish can't really be hurried, and it takes some 45-60 mins to finalise in total! And for an even better taste, you can optionally replace the lid for an aluminium foil cover and bake them in the oven for the last 15-20 mins. But trust us, it's SOOO WORTH IT! Once fully-cooked, serve them hot with a spoonful of thick sour cream on the side and some bread to dip into that delicious tomato sauce and cream mixture.

6. Zacuscă: summer in a jar

Zacuscă is Romania’s crown jewel of seasonal preservation. It’s a slow-cooked vegetable spread made with roasted aubergine, peppers, onion, and sometimes mushrooms. And it’s not just food, since it's made only ONCE A YEAR, it’s a labour of love and care for the whole family. In late August and early September, everyone from grandparents, parents, children, sometimes even cousins and aunts/uncles come together at the countryside ancestral home to make zacuscă for winter. So naturally, it gets loud, messy, busy, but it smells SO DIVINE. And it’s a powerful act of togetherness that ties generations together. The process isn't very complicated, but let's just say that the whole family working on it is not a coincidence, but a practical choice, given the ENOURMOUS amounts that this is usually produced in - think around 30-40 batches of jars per family. So you can get a feel of what it involves, here's the complete list of ingredients: roasted aubergines, roasted bell and pointy red peppers, onion, tomato paste/boiled tomatoes, sunflower oil, bay leaves, pepper, and salt (+mushrooms if preferred). And the steps, although might seem quite straightforward, do take their time: 

• First, all vegetables need to be roasted (directly on the flame or grill), peeled and gently washed (just enough to get out all the seeds - yes, you really need to make sure you remove all of them now!)
• Then everything needs to be chopped - here we use a special grinder/mincer, similar to the meat one, but replacing the grinder plate with a size that is a bit smaller so the paste remains soft
• Now, the magic happens! We cook everything together slowly in a HUGE pot directly over the fire for 2–3 hours at least, adding oil as needed and stirring constantly, to avoid sticking
• Laslty, we prepare the jars by heating them in the oven to sterilize them, and we add in the spread while hot, then we seal them by simmering them slowly in a shallow pan or deep oven tray filled with hot water

In the end, we get one of the most delicious vegetable spreads you'll ever try. If you've ever had the Croatian ajvar or the Bulgarian lutenitsa, this is similar, but so much richer in flavour because of the vegetable mix! Simiar to the aubergine dip, it's a breakfast staple food, but can also be served alongside salty cheese, some fresh onion and pork slanină (solidified fat with bacon strips) on our traditional appetizer plates.

7. The holy barbecue (grătar)

Romanians love a summer grill, and it would just not be the same without it! Whether in a backyard, a forest glade, or beside a mountain stream, grătare (barbecues) are where friendships are built (or destroyed depending on the amount of alcohol involved...) and laughter flows. Think juicy mititei (skinless sausages, just like the Balkan cevapi), smoky veggies, and heaps of bread, mustard, garlic sauce and pickles on the side. Barbecue isn’t just a cooking method, it’s a social event, often lasting all afternoon and night! What's more, it usually involves A LOT of music and games (like cards, backgammon, badminton or foot volley) - all turning into a day-long picnic outing. 

8. Summer drinks (a.k.a. Romanian summer cocktails)

Lastly, the homemade drinks (of course, they're not food, but could you imagine not pairing such delicious food with some refreshing drinks?)! And who says cocktails need alcohol? Here’s what Romanians sip on in summer:

• Socată – a fermented elderflower lemonade that’s tangy, floral, and totally refreshing. It’s homemade in huge jars and best enjoyed ice cold
• Cold sour cherry juice (vișinată fără alcool) – tart, sweet, and sometimes spiced
• Mint or lemon balm infusions – cooled and poured over ice, sometimes with honey

They’re natural, hydrating, and packed with childhood nostalgic flavours, the kind of summer drinks you crave all year round.

Is your mouth watering already?

Romanian summer food isn’t just about what's on the table, most of the time it's about how it gets there. It’s about picking tomatoes from the garden, shelling beans with your grandmother on the side of the village road, grilling in the forest (but only in specially-designated areas, because safety comes first!), or making zacuscă with your family. It’s about food that feeds the soul, cooked slowly, harvested seasonally, and shared with all your loved ones. So if you’re planning a trip to Romania, COME HUNGRY. And come curious, so you don’t miss the summer flavours that bring people all together!

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