AI recently revisited Casa Timiș resort the place where every year the National Gastronomy and Wine Day of Romania is celebrated, a project initiated together with Cezar Ioan and the chef of the resort's three restaurants Nico Lontras.
And, as always, we discovered even more tourist facilities than in the past. At Casa Timiș, work is done continuously, but it is done without discomfort for the guests. The drill remains the prerogative of the block neighbor and does not move to Prahova on weekends. More recently, they inaugurated the Rotonda, the third restaurant (outside the English Bar) and now they are working on a Spa Center that comes as a package with the know-how of the Eliade Clinic and a swimming pool with a belvedere plus 4 other new apartments.
As for the new restaurant – Rotonda, the menu is casual Mediterranean (Italian) with ingredients brought from Italy. Moreover, most of the culinary hits have as their star ingredient products from small Italian artisans, chosen by choice. From the three types of Grappa (order with confidence for a show as pleasant as possible - it comes to the table in a 2m vial so prepare your phones in advance) to the smoked burrata or the selection of fabulous cheeses aged for at least a year , all the elements of the dishes are carefully chosen and many of them are hard to find even at their mother because they are, so to speak, limited series not produced by the mass market.
Because the specialty is Italian casual, you can also find gourmet pizzas, so you can come quietly with children who are usually a bit more picky about their food, especially if it's not immediately recognisable. There is no shortage of seafood, fresh fish or beef. I had to finish the meal with a traditional-modernized dessert.
Because the Rotonda has this purpose, the previous restaurant Veranda becomes fusion-gourmet, and the one in Conac keeps its Romanian-modern specifics (for me it remains the standard and the main gastronomic calling card of the resort). Here Nico Lontras and his team led by Ioan Şușală modernize our traditional gastronomy and bring it into the 21st century. The taste remains recognizable, only the techniques are new and the chefs' ingenuity and attention to the aesthetics of the dishes are what will make you say wow at the end. If, in the case of Rotonda, the high quality Italian ingredients (they even bring special flours for the bakery products made by them) are the stars, the dishes in the Manor restaurant are based on local ingredients. Much of the menu is conceived as part of an ambitious and self-sustainable project: a nearby farm produces the house butter, hundreds of fruit trees have been planted on the hills, the hills of the region are full of truffles and deer and in the walk on the field you can smell the aromatic plants that reach the plate after they have been harvested in the morning.
Nico Lontras is one of the best Romanian chefs, with extensive experience in the kitchens of Estonia, Norway, Ireland, Italy. He is one of the pioneers of the modernization of Romanian cuisine and at Casa Timiș Resort he found the right place to show off his knowledge and vision of traditional and international cuisine.
Casa Timiș is an example of good practice in tourism where there is both form and substance. Great value is placed on all elements of hospitality and comfort. But, beyond the facilities offered, it seems extremely important to me that this ambitious project redefines an area with fabulous potential, but somehow ignored. An hour's drive from Bucharest, Casa Timiș draws attention to the Dealu Mare wine region. Unfortunately, without such a resort, the area would have continued to be pseudo-tourist despite the efforts of a few wineries to increase the attractiveness, and even despite the efforts of Cezar Ioan to create all kinds of touristic concepts for the region. It is out of your hands to take a wine tour and the driver not taste the wines, to accept that you will return to Bucharest in the evening, or to drive tens of kilometers more looking for something reasonable to eat. Casa Timiș also solves these needs and becomes the tourist standard bearer of the entire region.
Those cool photos are his Calin Stan, my others (you can figure out which one and how)
English 
Romanian 