Restaurant review: La Union

21 Strada Ion Caragiale (off Calea Rosetti)

The former home in Strada Caragiale, which belonged to classic Romanian author Ion Luca Caragiale, is now restaurant La Union, and I approach it with an open mind so as to taste the food. But I know this building well, for 12 years ago a delightfully eccentric Greek gentleman converted it into a restaurant which he named Casa Caragiale. He was too early for Bucharest and his quality was so high that he went bust. Truly a Romanian paradox!

So when entering it, I noticed that the new proprietors had done nothing to change the building after the Greek left it three years ago. Certainly there was a minimum of cosmetic changes such as a new lick of paint and a few pictures, but basically it was the same. But the House’s menu was so very different. For it has been reinvented as a Romanian restaurant, with quite a few dishes that were not purely Romanian, and thus they would be acceptable to more sophisticated European palates.

So, to list the menu, there was a selection of well priced starters at an average of RON 10. These included six huge mushrooms stuffed with melted Gorgonzola, which were an absolute delight. Blondie and I passed on: fried mushrooms and garlic, rice chicken and broccoli, rice and cheese, potato and rosemary grill and a baked pepper salad.

We also passed on their ‘plateaux’ dishes of: seven Romanian cheeses at RON 39, their fish (carp, salmon tartar, anchovies, fish paste and olive paste) at RON 51, and their mixed plateau of sheep cheese, goat cheese, sausage, pork neck, pastrami and smoked bacon at RON 48. Being a Romanian, Blondie thought these dishes were exciting, and since they were priced for two persons, she asked me to order and share with her. I did not do so as they did not appeal to me.

But what did appeal to me was their pasta section boasting pastas made in-house. At a price of RON 28 for each of the following, they were a bargain. There was a choice of pastas made with octopus, moules or prosciutto. For the same price we chose seafood. It was superb. Our bowl was laced with moules, four large peeled prawns, sliced calamari and baby octopus. In a garlic and wine sauce, it was a bargain.

So too was our next dish, ludicrously named ‘Tagliatelli AOP’. Yes, that’s right folks ‘AOP’. Blondie asked our waiter what that acronym stood for, and he replied, “Aioli”. This threw her into confusion, but I smiled benignly as I know that aioli (a mayo made from egg yolks, crushed garlic, lemon juice and olive oil) can be fabulous. Well our tagliatelli pasta arrived with cherry tomatoes, with a wonderful aroma of garlic. But no aioli whatsoever! The House made a mistake, but the pasta dish was lovely and so I forgave them.

A sullen Blondie then ordered a ‘chicken with a five herb sauce’. This is the point where Romanian food conflicts with superior Western culinary logic, for when I saw the herbs (basil, rosemary, dill, parsley and thyme) I told her that none of them complement each other in a blend, and that the dill would overpower the dish. Naturally, I was correct and she had a perfectly moist and tender chicken – in a dill sauce!

There was so much we could not sample, such as their grill section which listed: giant ribs at RON 23, pork cutlet at RON 18, sausages at RON 18 and chicken legs at RON 15. And if you think you will get tiny portions to match the price, you would be wrong. The menu states the weight (a crude, old communist practice) and each dish is generously ‘heavy’. The menu also lists the calorie count of each dish, which has to be a total bluff. But an amusing one.

But I just had to try their ‘spicy chicken in brown sauce’ because when I asked our waiter to explain ‘brown sauce’ he pleasantly surprised me by informing me that it was a sauce made by reducing beef bones. Oh yes! I had it and it was good.

So although I disagreed with the composition of so many of their dishes, which included sour cream, mamaliguta, local sausage, and local everything, we chose wisely and each dish we had was recommendable. If I compare this to other ‘specific romanesc’ restaurants I have had the misfortune to stumble into, La Union has to be the best. Oh, a word of warning: they only have a menu written in Romanian which I think is patronizing for foreigners. And that is the only negative statement I can make about the place. Go for it!

mab.media@dnt.ro

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