Member-only story
Lessons In Food From A Tiny Bulgarian Village
What making a cold soup called Tarator taught me about cooking, culture, and the meaning of real food
After traveling more than 24 hours from the United States to reach the tiny Bulgarian village of Perilovets, my husband, 10-month-old daughter and I were tired and famished. When I say tiny, I mean there are no services, no stores, no gas station, nothing but old houses.
The road to the village had potholes so large that I became worried about the state of the rental car we had borrowed. At some points along the 30-minute journey from the nearest town, the brush was so overgrown that it scraped the side of the car. There were some stretches of the winding road where it was not possible for two cars to pass each other.
At one point we navigated our way around a car whose driver stopped and rolled his window down asking suspiciously in Bulgarian “Kakvo pravish?” or “What are you doing?” Perhaps he was shocked to see visitors headed to the remote village or maybe we were just in his way.
Perilovets was deafeningly quiet. The village of about 15 people not far from the Serbian border was a relic of the past and a reminder of an outdated political system that no longer reigned.
