While Romania is considered one of the cheapest countries in Europe, travelling there for an extended period and eating out for every meal can eat into your budget. Especially if you go to a tourist area or a fancy restaurant. Also, because vegan food is not so in demand, tends to be a bit more expensive. A good alternative to dining out is buying either semi-prepared food or raw ingredients and cook them yourself. So besides the usual restaurants and cafés recommendations, I decided to visit the main supermarket chains and give you some options for vegan foods you can buy that don’t need a lot of preparations.

Romanian cuisine has at its core mainly animal products, but you can luck out if you visit there during one of the main fasting periods. As you might know, Romania is a predominantly Orthodox country and there are a few longer fasting periods, like the ones before Christmas (between November 15th – December 24th) and Easter (during the 6 weeks preceding Easter), when people don’t usually eat meat and sometimes neither eggs nor dairy. So at these times of the year you will find in supermarkets food sections dedicated to vegan products – “Produse de post”.

Every supermarket has a fruit and vegetable section offering a good variety of products. You can also take advantage of the great variety of canned or pickled vegetables and vegetable mixes or salads specific to this part of Europe (eggplant salad, zacuscă made with eggplants, peppers or mushrooms). In the last years, since more people are adopting a plant based diet, they stores started to offer a vegan products section as well. And of course there are also other incidental vegan products that are not labeled as such.

Starting this week I will dedicate a separate article to each supermarket showing you what you can expect to find in each one.