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Two yogurts before 9 AM
Banitsa and ayran
The primary breakfast pastry is banitsa, a phyllo-type dough filled with cheese and Bulgarian yogurt. The custom is to drink a beverage called ayran alongside it, a salty yogurt drink. That's two yogurts before most people have finished their coffee.
Yogurt at every meal
Lunch and dinner follow the same pattern. At a family restaurant run by a 27-year-old from Sofia named Constantine, about half the dishes have Bulgarian yogurt in them. The local tzatziki is called snezhanka. Katuk blends Bulgarian yogurt, Bulgarian cheese, and peppers, and the classic Bulgarian cake has yogurt too.
Constantine eats Bulgarian yogurt every morning, every day, nonstop.
Ayran works outside Bulgaria, too: in Berlin, a salty ayran beside a meat kebab made one of the best food and drink pairings an eater ever had.
Why does ayran pair well with grilled meat?
Ayran is yogurt thinned with cold water and salted, and it is drunk across Turkey, the Balkans, and the Caucasus. Its acidity and salt cut through rich, fatty meat. Turkish workers carried the pairing to Germany after the two countries signed a labor recruitment agreement in 1961, which is how Berlin's kebab shops came to serve it.
Why do Bulgarians hide fortunes in banitsa?
On New Year's Eve, families bake a banitsa with small fortunes tucked inside, often paper slips or dogwood buds. Each person at the table takes a piece, and what turns up inside is read as luck for the coming year. The pastry itself is layers of thin dough brushed with fat, filled with white brined cheese, and baked until the layers separate.
Why do Bulgarians eat yogurt soup cold?
Tarator is a chilled summer soup of yogurt thinned with water, with cucumber, garlic, dill, ground walnuts, and oil. It is served cold because it is made for hot weather, when a heavy hot dish is the last thing anyone wants. Turkey has a close relative called cacık.