S-he wrote a lot about communism; probably not enough, but it was written. The years after '89 were almost widowed by a consistent bibliography, only the last years seem somewhat more fruitful with memories from the cradle of our recent democracy. Today, the guest is Lucian Dragomir:
For me, the 90s, related to food, drink and other good practices/manners, began in the fall of 1992 when I left my parental hearth in the working-class city of Braşov province. I went to Bucharest as a semester student at the Tourism Economics faculty of the Romanian-American University.
It was the period of testing from "Terente" - a very successful substitute for whiskey (so it was written on the label), via the Lady M liqueurs with nudes on the label, produced in a small greenhouse in Căţelu commune, until the discovery of the finesse of Dimple or Hennessy. I wouldn't miss the rage of Tec or Tango instant envelope and other chemical bombs whose names I can't remember.
A premiere for my young and inexperienced papillae comes in the very first December spent in the Capital. Strolling around Magheru with the idea of buying something interesting for the holidays that I was going to spend at home with my family, I arrive in front of the Unique store where I find with childhood nostalgia a generous queue of scruffy and impatient people:
- What's going on?
- Give birth to rare fruits, kiwi!
Buuun, after a few hours and some minor frostbite treated later internally with something close to the octane numbers, I come out with a few kilos of the precious fruits. I arrive at my parents' house with a small part, it was not possible with the whole amount. They did not create who knows what reaction. Memorable was the response of my mother's boss upon hearing the description "take what my son came with from Bucharest!":
- – I ate in Germany, you eat these with salt!
If I still mentioned the area, my mother and the student, I must remember the few lunches I had with my mother when she came to visit me (supplying food and bread on foot) from the Dunărea Restaurant at the end of Magheru towards the University. Until 1994, it remained the crème de la crème in terms of restaurants in the Capital, a plus for us was the almost exclusively fish-based menu. There I ate morun, cega and lufar for the first time.
In the first semester of the first year, I shared the studio in Titan with my friend Mihai Berariu, a law student also from Braşov. Like all good people, I invested the money allocated by my parents for food in completely and completely different directions: pirated tapes with heavy metals, from the University, t-shirts with prints of my favorite bands, drink, concerts and even theater!
So our menu consisted of bacon, bacon with onion, pasta with sausage, pasta with bellows and pasta with bacon, just what we brought from home! We were, however, very lucky with our neighbors, two sisters who were impeccable housewives who cooked for their entire large and gourmet family, so we also enjoyed a correct and correcting amount of beers, most of the time in excess. There were several playgrounds, beer halls, at that time where the rockers gathered, all in the central area and most of the time the last subway, the last tram and the last bus caught us in heated discussions about riffs, gags or existential themes ( what are we drinking?) so we set off on foot towards Titan, stopping at every open kiosk, and towards May they were at that time, where we had to try a beer each. Most of the time we arrived well past the time when working people left for work!
It didn't take long, during the break between semesters, my friend's mother called my mother and they decided that for the health and academic future of their children it was imperative that we be separated!
Catch me in the 2nd semester in the medical girls' dormitory U. RA within the Polygraphy High School located on the border between Piaţa Scânteii and Dămăroia. Across from the train line and the road, the Training Center for Tourism Trades, Hotel Parc. Here, at the push-tray type canteen, I discovered the "secrets of gastronomy" from recent times, in some places only in the visible corners.
Glad to be able to eat something cooked at student-worthy prices, I take my first beef soup at this canteen. Shock and horror, at the bottom of the bowl sat the hell of a monster! Not having visited churches too often, I start to pick on those innocent children from the serving line with the classic question "is this how they teach you at school?". My soft tone alerted a "master of the culinary arts" who appeared from the kitchen with a shaky rhythm and with rapid breathing who explained to me with relative coherence that the regulations in force say that only one zama is made from all the bones mixed with vegetables for pork, beef and poultry, the meats are boiled separately on the racks and will be kept separately for serving!!!
And again I returned to cooking as a student because who knows what norms the foreman is still hiding. This is how the famous "home-hardened cabbage" was born. I was cooking on an electric grid consisting of a carved concrete bolt with a spiral groove through which a finger-thick resistor passed, and when it was connected to the outlet, the entire electrical network in Dămăroia sighed with the shadow of Brucan. I made the cabbage the way I knew at home, according to the Szekler tradition, with lard, thyme, onion, cumin, paprika and pepper. For about 5 hours I was spinning at it, two shots of coal extraction costing the energy, the smell reached as far as the Arc de Triomphe. I was making generous amounts, many mouths to feed because my dear colleagues didn't let me suffer on dry ground either. I even made good friends because of the smell of the food, on the top floor of the dormitory were the students from the Police Academy who showed up in school uniform (handcuffs and cane attached to the belt) to investigate where the noise was coming from. I, a pious soul, felt moved at the sight of the uniforms and invited them to the table. It proved a wise gesture for the night when we were attacked by the dark forces of the neighboring neighborhood.
In the summer of that year, I had a culinary experience that was at least curious for me.
With a relatively large group, we went on vacation to Costineşti, in 1993 we could still feel the good atmosphere that the resort had, we stayed at the host, "La Corsaru" which had some Brasovian blood.
Neicuțu walked more drunk than sober, so we also had a common denominator:
– Bre Corsare is the sea water cold?
- Cold as spirit!
One day he invites us to the table in his summer kitchen, 2 large and generous basins for washing bedding full of small red fish - "I caught them for nothing, the fishermen here say they are toxic yes, I've been bagging for 10 years and I'm having fun", Corsaru explained. In another vailing of normal size, minimum 5 litres, sauce from peppers and ripe tomatoes accompanied by a kg of garlic paste. He fried all the fishes according to the Dacian deep-fried method, a clear 0-waste dinner, I can say with my hand on my heart that this is how my beautiful, boundless love story with mullets began!
The 2nd and 3rd years of college, fall '93 - summer '95, I lived with rent, as I had the budget, on Olteniţei Road, close to the area where the buses turned right in front of the place where the peregrine falcons braked.
I had begun to taste the cheese sold on the sidewalk around the market on Metalurgiei, the sheep meat was even acceptable even though I was aware that the transhumance of animals was limited between the garbage heaps from Căţelu to the unsanitary meadow of Dâmboviţa!
Memorable from those years with some pain left forever in one's own and personal subconscious remains the grand opening of the first MC from Unirii which left casualties due to the opening promotion. Anyway, I remember that only after about 3 months was he able to enter with a queue of only half an hour. It was the first and only burger I ate at this franchise.
In the rented apartment I had a telephone, clearly with a disc, which had a cable several meters long that allowed me to make soups and stews under the strict and attentive guidance of my mother on the other end of the calls.
There was life in Berceni, the National football matches from the USA 94 final tournament could be seen on the block with minis and beer. I wasn't invited by the housing committee, but I knew, I could feel until the last hundredth of a gram of thyme in the pasta, the rented apartment was on the top floor! And don't forget, who fixed the world football championship in session, or vice versa? A few years later I couldn't eat any more, now we've reconciled, we're really good!
The following year I moved better, also on Olteniţei, a few stations further towards civilization, right in front of the children's hospital. The block full of young women, the cruelest was around 68 years old. It was my birthday, the end of May, ready I feel like it, I invite the good people weeks before. We were arranging around the house, moving massive wooden furniture to make room for the game to take place in optimal conditions, waiting for help from home brought by my brother with the family van after a week in which we only ate lard and jam for the reason of spending almost all the money on the ticket of access to the memorable Paradise Lost concert and on the long course I washed myself with dishwashing liquid. With my eyes on the clock, I remember that I come with the goods from home, cake, steaks, sausages, roe and many bottled bottles of wine, me without a corkscrew.
I break down the door and run to a college colleague who lived nearby and paralyze me with my hand on the doorknob. Nearby, I could practically feel the heat in my fine nostrils, was a bronze-painted metal stand with a thick sand-filled tray in which a large cluster of candles burned. I look up, I see through the open door of the front apartment, on the table, the coffin with the dead and everything!
I had no way to countermand, in 20 minutes it was the start time, the guests were already on their way, mobile phones would appear a few years later. Even now I can't tell if it was a semi-mute party or if it was a dancing vigil?
For the next two years, I concentrated less with my studies, being drawn into a small business whose object of activity was the distribution of food products. Whether it was then that the HoReCa industry began to develop, or whether I started to afford it, I ate more and more often in the city. I most appreciated the restaurants on the shores of Lake Herăstrău, the locations, the food was far from what I would have liked. One more pizza, a maximum of two pastas and some fish tired of being frozen/refrigerated.
In those years, the patisseries, especially the one in Amzei, were far above what the restaurants in the capital generally offered, the merdenels for me being the most delicious. The only surprise was delivered by the late actor and stuntman Szabolcs Cseh when he opened the Transylvanian specific restaurant opposite UNATC Mâncare that we knew, we understood, made correctly by a lady from Mureş county. I remember that after the first goulash (gulyas) eaten there, I said that I had to move closer to the area. In the beginning there you received authentic palinka from the house.
A funny incident from that period that I unwittingly generated due to a regionalism. My small wholesale business had rented a stand in the Masa shopping center in Căţelu commune. One day when I had to stay there for many hours, tormented by severe hunger, I muster up the courage and go to the restaurant with prepared food (the only notable thing was that it had Moldavian steaks on the menu, another first for me at at that time), cooked would be too much to say, I order a papara, the mullet who took the orders:
– What is that?
- Eggs! I bark outraged!
- And so?
- Frying pan, oil, fire - I was already in despair!
- Come on sir, people are waiting in line; mesh or omelette?
- Ooooomeleta, I managed to stammer...
Towards the end of the 90s, I return to my ancestral hearth, to Braşov without a well-defined goal or well-defined future plans.
In my work of reconnecting with the city and especially with my friends, I go for a walk through the center with my dear friend Goro. Walking seemingly aimlessly, we find that most of the breweries, taverns and restaurants that we all frequented during our teenage years have closed or turned into banks, sif or medical clinics. After a long search, we ended up buying beer from the kiosk in Livada Poštei, which we enjoyed, being extremely tired, on a bench in the immediate vicinity of the Central Library. Goro issues one of the most memorable definitions of the state of affairs:
- - Well, Luciene, do you notice that they took all our playgrounds? Where else can children like us play?
I felt that I had a duty, a goal, a mission for the community but especially for myself. Together with my family I opened a terrace bar where you could only listen to rock! What a bohemian life, what memories! In the immediate vicinity, only a fence and a street of 2.69 meters housed a cogeamite hostel for non-familists, the only one in the heart of Brasov. Good souls had their living space there, they taught me that you have to constantly change the technical and material basis of the location in order to remain attractive to the general public. Thus they completed what they lacked in the rooms and common bathrooms with what seemed to them to be out of fashion in my place, from the lamps in the bathroom to the floats in the toilet basin. They even showed me that the basins (new and modern at the time) made of composite material that sit right on the toilet do not look good at all and they removed them. They weren't satisfied with the classic suspended cast iron ones either, they took them, I guess we didn't get the color right. We buy light bulbs by the pallet!
We were very successful selling microwaved CDs, round savory cheese pies the size of laser read discs.
The final tournament of the World Football Championship in 1998 found me completely and completely in a different position than the previous one, on the terrace with the last tab released there: gin and tonic in a pint of half a liter!
At that time, I frequently went to many places, both bars and restaurants, in Braşov, most of the time to have dinner. The restaurants' offers had shyly started to break away from the classic grilled meats with mashed potatoes and the holy trinity of soups: belly, beef and beans. Restaurant Ischia was opening, perhaps the most authentic Italian restaurant that operated in the city, home-made pasta and limoncello, wines from the south of Italy and wonderful mini-pizzas on the menu. The Wheel of Fortune was gaining momentum with the classic Romanian cuisine, ciolan, mutton pastrami served in several dishes, the little celebrities.
A highly sought-after restaurant was operating in the Dramatic Theater building, non-stop program, generally mundane menu but with many dishes, chicken soup, periwinkle soup and if you were lucky like me when one night I received 2-3 fine strips of synthetic Parisizer cutisin in my stomach soup. After the circus I did for many years, I was friends with the local manager. I learned a lot from him in terms of tact and smoothing over spontaneous conflicts.
From the old and gallant guard of ONT Carpaţi Braşov, Aro-Palace, Postăvarul and Cerbul Carpatin still survived with heavy breathing from bankruptcy. They still had the stoves built in the middle of the huge kitchens and with the menus from 77. Notable in all this archaism was that you could order Brasovan pancakes and croquettes, the bad thing was that we got pancakes with sweet cheese and cheese balls. The events, especially those that take advantage of human distress aka weddings, were trapped in a long-gone era thanks to menus suffocated with gelatins, galantines, terrines, salami roses, doboş and other anachronisms. It's a shame that the development and innovation didn't continue, these restaurants together with the Chinese one in Piaţa Sfatului were a pinnacle of excellence in professional Romanian tourism cuisine starting from the end of the 70s and until a little after the Revolution of 89. From here a few chefs , carefully selected by the services of the Ceausist Ministry of the Interior, were sent to specialize in France and China, later becoming trainers for two generations of chefs from all over the country.
In Predeal at Vârful cu Dor, the food was very good, perhaps the best in the country at that time, the restaurant being managed by one of the chefs mentioned above with an original menu, a lot of game and diverse, Camembert bread with forest fruits. . .
Poiana Brașov was in full privatization process, a towering elm tree grew by the counter of the famous bar in Hotel Teleferic. I saw it mature from a few meters in 2008! Still in 2010, in the kitchen of the Alpin Hotel, the built stove for cooking, about 6 meters long, was sitting in the middle, the stove bent like the anti-grenade shield on the belly of the Russian T34 tank, and to make the picture complete, there were also some softer bricks in -a corner of the stove!
A unique experience that clarified for me the direction that the hospitality industry in Romania should have taken was served to me during my vacation in the summer of 1997 at the "Cormoran", Uzlina in the Danube Delta!
A US expat friend asked me to book a special vacation in the Delta for June, 4 people are going to go. Through a local travel agency promoting a special new location on Braţul Sfântul Gheorghe, I paid for a half-board stay for a relatively large amount at the time, the equivalent of an acceptable second-hand car.
Following the agency's directions, we arrive at the parking lot of the Murighiol wharf, where a gentleman with a table attached to an agenda welcomes us. We tell him the name we made the reservation with and immediately our luggage is transferred from the car to a transfer boat by 2 boys in "sailor" costumes.
After a 15-minute boat ride on a canal and a good stretch of the Danube, we reach our destination. At that time Mr. Găină had only built the central building and 2-3 gazebos with the swimming pool in mind. Everything looked impeccable, the terrace, the thatched roofs, the flower alleys, the gazebo for cleaning the fish, the restaurant, the attention to detail and above all the impeccable cleanliness! If I keep mentioning new things, for those years in Romania, I must emphasize the vision of Mr. Găină, the owner, who realized, among the few still to this day, even if he made a luxurious complex what he wanted to distance himself from the rustic and traditional, he kept the local architectural lines, the white and blue deltaic colors and above all he understood that the kitchen can only be operated by local people. For the entire duration of the stay, I enjoyed almost all the traditional dishes of the place, impeccably prepared by 3 ladies from Murighiol, to whom I discovered all the secrets of the trade. Behind the central building and up to a small canal with stagnant water, about 2000 sq m. , housed a proud vegetable garden bordered on one side by an old vineyard.
In the mornings when I didn't go fishing all night, while drinking coffee on the terrace, I watched with great interest the ritual by which the cooks chose their raw material of the day directly from the fishermen's boats that stopped there for the first time after emptying setcilor on their way to cherhana. There I saw for the first time Caras of 3 kilos or bream of 5 kilos!
The days when we went fishing like "professionals" that started at 4:30 a.m. with a gentle wake-up call by the boatmen who were waiting for us with steaming coffee and the packet that replaced breakfast, catfish and carp roe, smoked and marinated mackerel, the mysilics of the area. When we returned with great catches, for a small fee, the trained staff would clean, package and freeze our fish! We also achieved a special closeness with almost all the staff from "Cormoranul" by anointing the relations with a bottle of "Ceausescu" vodka, gifts received with enthusiasm by them!
One of the days, at the recommendation of the owner, we went with two professional fishermen from Lipovi, to have an authentic lunch in the lake! Igor and Vania picked us up from the pier of the establishment and we started upstream towards the famous loop of the St. Gheorghe arm, about where they had their fishing concession. Somewhere to the right on our direction of travel we turned onto a small canal covered by vaults formed by weeping willows reaching a small gravel between the waters there having the hut, the 2's living base during the summer season, in the fall moving Razelm . At the appearance of bottles of vodka lu* Nea Nicu, the 2 vajnic hosts became more voluble and more energetic so that we began to see a little of the hard life they led. It was shocking to learn about the purchase rates practiced by the traders, 2 tons of Chinese carp were remunerated with less than the equivalent of a case of ordinary beer, the fees for granting fishing concessions rose to the quotas of customs officers in the west of the country, access to services practically non-existent health. Other sources of income outside of fishing are also non-existent. . . .
It is certain that I ate one of the tastiest meals in the Delta in all my pilgrimages, I think it is easier for me to count the years when I have not been than the ones I have been, not infrequently going several times in the same year. They say that you can make a fisherman out of a man, but you can't make a fisherman out of a man!
In conclusion, I would mention that the 90s left me with the sour-bitter taste of galloping inflation, the money spent on 10 beers the next day turned out to be enough for only 5!