Dunarea Restaurant

🇷🇴 ROMANIA / The cuisine north of the Danube River in Romania has a very talented home in an Anaheim kitchen.

🇷🇴 ROMANIA
📍 821 N. Euclid Street,
Anaheim, Orange County.
🅿️ Small plaza parking lot
🥤 Beer and wine

If you can ever make it through Anaheim’s rush hour and successfully navigate into this small Euclid Street plaza just north of the 5, the rare (to LA) world of Romanian cuisine is waiting as a reward. At the crossroads of Central Europe and the Balkans, and nestled against the eastern shores of the Black Sea, Romanian food shares similarities with those nations around it but is most certainly unique.

Most people here come with a purpose, as it would be very hard to notice it from the street. Even if you did but do not happen to speak Romanian, the little corner shop would mean very little, only described as “Eastern European” on its sign.

The Romanian word Dunărea is the name of Europe’s second longest river. It begins as die Donau in Germany’s Black Forest, becomes the Dunaj in Slovakia, the Duna as it flows through Hungary, and Dunav/Дунав through Croatia and Serbia. After that, it makes up most of Romania’s southern border and takes on the name this restaurant uses. English speakers know this mighty river, which eventually empties from Romanian’s coast to the Black Sea, as the Danube.

If it is your first time eating here and you bring a group, you may think about asking the proprietor to guide you in putting together communal plates for appetizers and entrees. On a recent Thursday, a group of six appetizers (four cold, two hot) showed up on a beautiful carved wood board (below), ready to be picked clean.