Dracula Romanian Food, Alexandra Village

I was repressing a silent snigger as I saw this place (Blk 127, Bukit Merah Lane 1 # 01-230, Alexandra Village, tel: 6270 5464) at first glance. Not sure if I had actually smirked. In my mind I had ominously envisioned the Joker and Vlad the Impaler standing side by side since this store was located just next door to Funny Lasagna. In the end, there was nothing really sinister looking about this Dracula place as it was not comical in any sense for their neighbour.

Romanian food was something I've never had before and didn't think I would experience here. The food did look pretty rustic and I imagined them as dishes that might have originated from the poor back in the day. Anyone who's in the the know, please enlighten.

We started off with some sour Romanian meatball soup (is that ciorbă de perişoare?) of sorts and home made sausages.


The sour soup tasted much like borsch minus the ruddy hues that one commonly associates with them. In the broth were a bunch of potatoes, carrots and enough chopped parsley for their flavoor to be quite pronounced. Along some other herbs which I couldn't identify. The meatballs were quite generously portioned. Of a make that one can associate to food of perhaps peasants of history where meat could have been expensive and starch fillers were used. In this case, there was rice in the peppery tasting meatballs. Dracula must have made it rain tonight for me to enjoy this stuff. Ahem!

The home made sausages were pretty good. Greasy, salty and filled with grits and bits of unidentifiable stuff. These sausages weren't packed that tightly and the cases were also not snappy. The stuffings fell apart and spilt as I tried to cut them. Notable mention goes to the flatbread (it tasted more like Turkish bread actually) which the sausage was served with. This stuff was definitely freshly made as evident from the taste.


This dish is described as fried meat with polenta and cheese (is this sărmăluţe cu mămăligă?). You know what's the irony? Cornmeal isn't expensive and this was probably the largest serving of polenta I've ever had. Ever. It was hearty. It was good. The salty meats in the middle were chicken and some other minced meat which I couldn't identify. Could have been pork. All slathered in some light creamy cheese that tasted like yoghurt.


This dish looked dubious initially since they had a templated dish of various meats that looked suspiciously like the local Hainanese styled westerns. To digress, there was even a Romanian steak of sorts. When inquired about, the server merely said "the chef's Romanian, the boss is Romanian and hence, the steak is Romanian". Lol. In any case, this lamb was surprisingly quite good in spite of the fact that it was a almost well done. The meat retained tenderness and had a nice amount of fat. The natural flavour of the meat was definitely there despite being covered in that peppery mushroom sauce. I saw the chef peeling a truckload of potatoes back in the kitchen which were to be cooked and mashed for servings. Nothing came with fries and you know where your mashed spuds are from.

I'm certainly not adversed to trying more of their food another time.