1-goodguyalex_2003_0

The speaker, Alex, talks about Romanian cuisine, mentioning its meat-heavy nature and the importance of food in his family. He highlights the popularity of soup, particularly sour soup, and mentions a cafe in Wellington that serves Romanian food. Alex believes that food is a way to understand different cultures and hopes for more Romanian-based places to open in his area. He mentions the national dish, Sarmale, and expresses excitement about his mom cooking it for Christmas. Yay, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3, 4, ok, where are my notes, alright, hello, my name is Alex and I'll be talking about Romanian cuisine, I've decided to talk about this topic in particular as my family is from Romania, specifically from a small town in the Transylvanian region. Food has always been an important aspect within my family as we still eat traditional Romanian food here every day in New Zealand. As Roxandra points out that Romania, like other European countries, have seen traditional foods as European identity or culture or heritage. But what does Romanian cuisine consist of? Well, it's a very meat-heavy cuisine. According to Voina, Romanian cuisine is more likely to be animal-based compared to a more plant-based cuisine. That's why she also states that's why Romanians are more reluctant to switch to a more plant-based diet as meat is so deeply rooted in their culture. In my family, we actually have a farm in the countryside outside of the town that we live in where we raise pigs in order to make sausages and usually we have these sausages for the Christmas season. But it's not just meat that is a huge icon in Romanian cuisine, but soup as well. Whenever I head back to Romania, we always start lunch with a bit of soup, you know, just to get the meal started. In Romania, chorba, which is a sour type of soup, is quite popular amongst tourists. Borcomann says that local menus across the country will always have either soup or sour soup on it. So, you know, whenever you're going to Romania, you know that you will be having soup wherever you go as that's what's always there. Here in Wellington, I was able to find a place that serves Romanian food, which was quite lucky. August's Eatery is a little cafe-like shop that serves Mediterranean food and one of the owners has some Romanian heritage, as is reflected in the menu as they serve meat, which is my personal favourite Romanian dish. I love it, especially on a barbecue, oh, the best. When I was able to try some of their meat, I was brought back straight to Romania as it tasted just like my grandmother's meat. August's Eatery is quite a unique place as it's one of the few places that allows people from New Zealand to get a little taste of Romanian traditional food without flying to the other side of the world, which is quite nice. In New Zealand, there's such a mix of different cultures within the country that we have different restaurants that express these different cultures. Food, in my opinion, is one of the easiest ways to understand a culture that is different from your own. Around the world, different cultures use different ingredients and all these different spices and even some cultures share the same foods, but they taste different. For example, meat, you can find them in Greece as well, but the Greek meat is very different from the Romanian ones. You get to experience new flavours, maybe find new favourites while exploring the world for food. Hopefully, well I'm hoping, that more Romanian-based places get to open up around my area in order to get that taste of home. Maybe introduce the national dish, which is Sarmale, which my mum has started cooking up a huge pot for the Christmas season. Oh, I hate my life! Bleagh! Bleagh!