A Bulgarian meal starts with salad and rakia, and they arrive together, before everything else. Shopska salad — tomato, cucumber, pepper, raw onion, grated white brine cheese — is the national dish and is genuinely better here.
A mehana is a traditional tavern, usually with grilled meat, clay-pot dishes and live music at weekends. Portions are large.
Banitsa, filo pastry with brine cheese, is breakfast. Ayran, salted yoghurt drink, goes with everything. Tarator, cold cucumber and yoghurt soup, is the correct answer to August.
Wine is seriously good and under-exported: Melnik in the south-west, Mavrud around Plovdiv, Gamza in the north-west. Wineries increasingly take visitors.
Vegetarians do fine — the salad, bean and pastry tradition is old and unselfconscious. Vegans should learn the phrase for "without cheese".
