December 20th, 2006 - Regensblog

The Joint

Sos. Bucium (langa statia Petrom)
Phone: +40 232 21.87.01

http://www.inoras.ro/?section=local&instit=326&dom=3&or=1

Bar none, this was my favorite dining experience in Iasi. Nelu kindly took me on a night-time driving tour of the town, which ended here. I’d been looking for an authentic Romanian restaurant to try ever since I arrived on my first trip to Iasi back in November 2006. I am so glad he showed me this restaurant.

Nelu told me that Romanians like their food sour, and he was not kidding. We had crusty, crunchy bread on which we spread olive paste and red pepper paste, and an appetizer of dill pickles dusted with paprika. I tried a Romanian beer brewed in Iasi that is quickly getting famous. It was very good.

For the main course, I had mutton with polenta and sheep’s cheese. It was excellent. The sheep’s cheese adds a great tangy flavor to the polenta and also compliments the flavors of the mutton.

I recommend this place to anyone visiting Iasi looking for authentic Romanian cuisine. It’s so hard to find traditional places like these among all the pizza/Italian restaurants!

Big ups to the Hotel Unirea for offering to call — and keep calling — Austrian Airlines to inquire about my lost bag for me while I was at work today. Big boos to Austrian Airlines having lost it in the first place, and making me wear the same clothes three days in a row, and not having the decency to deliver my lost bag to my hotel. They made me come pick it up!

This morning (It’s about 6:30 now) I will do a full shave (I didn’t trust the flimsy disposable one in my Star Alliance overnight bag to do anything more than my neckline) and wear clean, non-jean, non-t-shirt clothes for the first time since Sunday morning at 4:00 Central European Time. I’m really looking forward to it.

I tend to ride to and from the office in a taxi while it’s dark when I’m here visiting. Various members of the hotel staff have been calling at all hours of the day/night to the Austrian Airlines department at the Iasi Airport and reporting back to me. I found out yesterday at 1pm that I’d have a two-hour window to pick up my stuff, starting at 12pm (so much for the two hours). I was prepared to take a taxi out to the airport and back, but Vlad suggested he drive me in the company car. Vlad has been very, very helpful in lots of office-related ways. He sacrificed his lunch hour and I am grateful for that. We got stuck in traffic, further shortening my 2-hour window to arrive at the airport. The image at left actually does not show one of the reasons we got stuck in traffic. Those horses were moving along at a good clip.