Chef Alexandru Dumitru opens popup restaurant Anika by the Sea

Anika, the gastronomic project curated by Chef Alexandru Dumitru and sommelier Andrei Popa, is launching a pop-up version by the sea through a collaboration with Hacienda de Mare Olimp. Anika By The Sea is located this season on a spacious terrace on the private beach of the boutique hotel Hacienda de Mare, in an intimate area from the Copahavana beach in Olimp.

The collaboration started with a dinner at the Anika restaurant in Bucharest. The owner of the boutique hotel Hacienda de Mare visited the restaurant in Bucharest and, being delighted by the culinary and oenological experience, invited Chef Alexandru Dumitru and Sommelier Andrei Popa to bring the experience of modern Romanian cuisine in the boutique hotel complex he owns on the seaside. After a few weeks of intense work, Anika By The Sea appeared.

“If you switch Anika restaurant in another geographical area of our country, the menu of dishes and wines will look completely different. I like to highlight the local seasonal ingredients and capture the specifics of the place in my dishes. This year, we have an extraordinary opportunity to experiment with the ingredients provided by the Black Sea, and the best place for this is the Romanian seaside”, says Alexandru Dumitru.

The Anika By The Sea menu has a la carte format and is created around the ingredients from the Danube Delta and the Black Sea. The strong gastronomic identity of the place was captured by Chef Alexandru through some dishes such as Storceagul – a traditional fish soup from the Danube Delta, Turkish eggplants stuffed in sarmuzac style – a sauce prepared according to a Dobrogea region recipe. In order to be faithful to the philosophy of using as many local ingredients as possible, the vegetables used by Chef Alexandru for the dishes on the menu are from farmers in Dobrogea.

The wine list, created by Sommelier Andrei Popa is perfectly associated with the fish menu and contains, for the most part, white and pink wines from local wineries. “The Dobrogea area is very tender in terms of wines. Therefore, I invite guests of Anika By The Sea to explore the wine list, where they will be able to discover and taste only wines born in the Dobrogea terroir. Being an area with a tradition in viticulture, with a soil rich in calcareous clays and favored by the sea breeze, we have the promise of high quality wines”, says Andrei Popa.

The seaside restaurant will be open for the entire summer season, from June 25 to September 15, 2020. Both hotel guests and outsiders will be able to enjoy a la carte menu, mainly fish for lunch or dinner, in a relaxing atmosphere, between sand, waves and sun. Hacienda De Mare is a boutique hotel in Olimp resort, located directly on Copahavana Beach. The hotel offers 18 rooms, being one of the most beautiful holiday places on the Romanian coast.

Chef Alexandru Dumitru was awarded Chef of the Year 2019 by Gault&Millau Romania. Anika Bucharest serves its summer menu, for which Chef Alexandru Dumitru found his inspiration in the seasonal ingredients, picked from the culinary garden of the Anika restaurant or provided by local farmers and producers. Thus, the seasonal menu is dynamic and can be enjoyed in a tasting format in 3, 5 and 7 dishes. The guests of the restaurant can opt for a menu of tasting wines, associated with the ordered dishes, these being chosen by the in-house sommelier Andrei Popa.