5 Best Restaurants in Sofia, Bulgaria

This very chic and hip restaurant doubles as a club in the evening, but the mood is slightly more restrained during mealtimes. The interior boasts bright, modern designs, and there is also a garden for summer dining. The good value food leans towards Italian with plenty of pasta dishes on offer, but other meat and fish mains are more pan-European in style, such as grilled sea bass or duck breast with balsamic sauce.

In a typical Bulgarian tavern with stone walls, wooden barrels adorning the walls, and wooden pails hanging from the ceiling, this place charmingly recreates the atmosphere of old Sofia. Cooking is traditional Bulgarian fare, which, like most Balkan cuisines, places the emphasis on grilled meats with desserts that revolve around yogurt and/or honey. Service is friendly and efficient, the portion sizes are huge, and the prices are low—everything, in fact, that's guaranteed to make an evening go well. A group of Bulgarian folk musicians adds to the ambiance most evenings.

This large, elegant restaurant in the heart of Sofia covers two floors of an exquisitely restored old corner house. The spacious dining rooms are furnished with natural wood, including the window blinds and the highly polished floors. The food is excellent and the service impeccable, and the menu offers a wide range of classic dishes from both Italy and Eastern Europe. Guests can also dine among the greenery of the outdoor garden during the summer months.

L'Etranger is very popular with the local expat community, and even French visitors swear by its authenticity and the high standards of head chef Olivier Roche. The elegant surrounds are meant to—and do—evoke the charms of a Parisian bistrot. The daily changing menu is not printed up but is instead brought to your table on a white board. French classics like rabbit make regular appearances, served up in a variety of delicious ways.

The 'Swan' restaurant is about 8 miles (around 20 minutes by taxi) southeast of central Sofia, but its setting alone—beside the shores of Pancharevo Lake—makes the effort of getting here worthwhile. The ambiance is simply breathtaking and the elegant interior, with its latticework screens and occasional Buddha statuary, is designed to evoke images of Japan and the Far East. That's more for the feng shui aspect, however, as the excellent food (both in taste and value) is more European in style, with a long list of great fish and meat dishes as well as several salad options. You can also dine in the garden during the summer.