Detailed Gluten-Free Restaurant Card — Romania

A small scene, an honest table

Romania’s gluten-free scene is small but real: Bucharest has dedicated options and good supermarket free-from sections, and the everyday table is full of naturally gluten-free food — mămăligă, grilled meats, vegetable salads, zacuscă. Awareness drops sharply outside Bucharest and Cluj, so this card earns its keep.

What’s on the card

• An explanation of boala celiacă in Romanian
• What I can’t eat and where gluten hides: mititei (mici) that often contain breadcrumbs, ciorbă often thickened with flour, sarmale whose filling needs to be rice-only
• What’s usually workable: mămăligă (with a verified dedicated pan) and plain grilled meats without breadcrumb binder
• The kitchen questions — including “Is the ciorbă thickened with flour?” and “Do the mititei or sarmale contain breadcrumbs?”

What’s in the travel companion (page 2)

• How I find places: “fără gluten” on menus, Find Me Gluten Free for Bucharest and Cluj, international hotels and big-mall restaurants as the reliable fallback, and the card itself in traditional taverns
• Six dishes worth ordering, shopping notes (Schär, the Hungarian brand Glutenix, and the free-from sections at Mega Image, Carrefour, and Auchan), and where options cluster — Bucharest’s Old Town and Floreasca, Cluj-Napoca, Brașov, Sibiu
• If you get glutened: the farmacie phrase “am boala celiacă și am mâncat gluten,” and 112 as the EU-wide emergency number

The honest certification picture

ARIG — Asociația Română pentru Intoleranță la Gluten (arig.ro) — is Romania’s celiac patient association, an AOECS member that licenses the Crossed Grain mark locally. That mark applies to packaged foods, not restaurant meals, and “fără gluten” on labels is an EU-regulated claim (max 20 ppm). Restaurant plates carry no certification, which is exactly the gap the card fills.

Format

Instant download: a 2-page PDF for printing or your phone.

This card helps communicate your dietary needs. It does not guarantee a gluten-free meal or eliminate cross-contact risk. Always use your judgment, and when in doubt, do not eat. Not medical advice.