Braşov, Romania – I look up with a smile, saying I don’t need help with the menu.
The mici cut the mustard.
My young server, Dimitrie, raises an eyebrow. The Beer Corner offers a wide variety of traditional Romanian dishes and he's genuinely surprised.
I may have been wrong.
He looks at me quizzically as I try to order mici without bread or mustard, and explains that “bread is a necessity.”
“It’s how we eat them,” he adds with a grin.
The garlicky, uncased sausages are one of the main things on my culinary checklist for this trip. Mici, meaning “little ones,” are nearly ubiquitous in Romania, as the country consumes 440 million of them a year.
Dimitrie says he’ll “put me on the flow,” making me hip to eat them like a local. As they arrive with a sizzle that tickles my nostrils, I can’t help but say he was right. Again.
Dinner also includes Tochiturà de porc, a meaty plate of braised pork, sausage, pickle salad and polenta topped with a fried egg and telemea cheese. It’s tasty and filling, but the sheer saltiness draws any remaining moisture from my body. |
| Reflexes of an aging cat. |
As I get up to leave, he asks if I’d like to play a drinking game, pointing to a digital clock I hadn’t seen behind me. Stop it at exactly 00:10:00 and you win 20 per cent off your meal.
I miss by a hundredth of a second.
Dimitrie has been so great I give him the 20 per cent as a tip instead.
There's not much of a tipping culture here and the machine isn't programmed to take that much. My turn to put him on the flow.
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