Prices and costs

Romania is not bottom of the chain cheap, but food and drinks can be quite cheap if you know where to shop for them. there are many supermarkets/food sotres with prices from very expensive to average to cheap.

Delicatesses

I will start at the top: Delicateria Traiteur where you find selection of fine cheese, wine, bakery, and cakes and you are guaranteed to spend a lot of money, but you will be spoiling yourself with exquisite flavours. Even if you won’t buy a lot of products it’s worth a visit and you might even get to taste their selection of fine cheese in store (Bd. Dacia 119 or in Dorobanti Putul lui Zamfir 22-24).

Well stocked supermarkets

Moving down on the scale you have the supermarkets: Billa (Barbu Vacarescu) Mega Image (Stefan cel Mare, Eminescu, Bd. Ion Mihalache) where you can shop for food and drinks and get quite a good deal. Beer price starts from 3 RON (0,8 EUR) up to 8 RON (1,5 EUR). Regular bread is 2 RON (0,4 EUR) and bakery products vary from 0,5 to 2,3 EUR. It will be rather easy to make the conversion, 1 EUR is 4.6 RON – just convert all prices within that range and you will get an accurate idea of how expensive or not expensive food is. If you shop for food in a supermarket you end up paying as much as 100 RON (21 EUR) for vegetables, meat, cheese, wine, dessert to last 3 days. Just to give you an idea.

Prices at restaurants and bars

Prices in restaurants are a bit more expensive and you will pay for a 2 course meal for two people plus drinks around the same money as when buying enough foodto last 3 days from the supermarket. It’s really up to you, but my advice is to try both and see which one works out best. Prices in clubs and restaurants have an added value of at least 40% so you end up paying slightly more. For instance beer can double it’s regular supermarket price when you go out. Food as well. You pay for 500 grams of chicken around 20 RON (4,3 EUR) whereas if you order a chicken steak in a restaurant it will be delicious, but you pay for 200 grams almost the same price if not more. So there you have it with the difference between supermarket prices and restaurant/bars prices. Make sure to always convert from RON to EUR and you’ll know if you got your money’s worth for drinks and food regardless of where you decide to purchase them.

Feel free to ask a question or leave a reply!