Bucharest for foodies

Best restaurants

Bucharest's restaurant scene concentrates, almost stubbornly, in the few short blocks of the Lipscani quarter where Strada Covaci, Strada Șepcari, Strada Franceză and Strada Smârdan meet inside the 030094 to 030116 postal band. Twelve addresses within a five-minute walk of each other cover Romanian tavern cooking, Balkan grills, Neapolitan pizza, French bistro, Irish pub food, Mexican tacos, pan-Asian wok, and a Mediterranean fine-dining room. This is not a survey of Bucharest's suburbs or its mall food courts; it is a working editor's shortlist of the Old Town kitchens worth an hour of a visitor's evening. The addresses, phone numbers and service hours below come from OpenStreetMap; the opinions are the house's. Read it as a walking list, not a ranking to argue with. The order below is a suggestion of when in a trip to reach each door, not a scoreboard, and every claim of hours or address is cited so you can plan a specific evening rather than hope for the best.