ARTE Distribution

Piata Obor is Romania’s culinary heart, where city chefs and home cooks alike source the freshest ingredients. From Doru’s cherry orchard to Ionuț’s fragrant herbs, the market links the hi-tech capital to its rural roots. We explore rustic goulash, colorful lobodă, traditional desserts like papanasi and we taste bragă, a tangy fermented drink. Outside the city, we join harvesting juicy watermelons and fishing on the Danube Delta. Piata Obor is a delicious blend of tradition, creativity, and seasonal bounty.

In Bucharest, Piata Obor is more than a food market. It’s a living showcase of Romanian flavor and traditions. Beneath its wide roof, farmers and food lovers exchange not only goods but also stories. Chef Mihai, a market regular, reinvents the classic goulash with offcuts and forgotten parts of the animal, giving new life to humble ingredients. Robert prepares a steaming dish of lobodă — red orach — with a burst of color and taste. And food blogger Jamila offers her take on papanasi, Romania’s iconic dessert made of fried dough, cheese, and jam.
Beyond the market’s colorful stalls, we venture into the orchards of Doru, whose cherry trees bear fruit with unmatched sweetness. In the fields surrounding the capital, young Ionuț cultivates aromatic herbs —thyme, lovage and many more — all destined for Obor’s tables. In Dăbuleni, Ninel proudly harvests his watermelons, prized for their size and taste. Then, we meet Dragoș, one of the few remaining producers of bragă, an ancient, fermented grain drink once popular across the Balkans. Made from wheat or corn, it’s tangy, lightly fizzy, and deeply rooted in Romanian heritage just as the Prussian carps, fished in the Danube Delta.
Returning to Obor, the market pulses with life — its stands brimming with pickles, fruit, grilled minced meat and spices. With its deep connections to the surrounding countryside, Piata Obor captures Romania’s complex relationship with food: at once rustic and refined, rooted in the past and open to reinvention. Here, tradition meets creativity, and every ingredient tells a story.