What to eat in Veliko Tarnovo
The mehana is where you eat in Veliko Tarnovo — shopska salad first, kavarma in a clay pot, and banitsa in the morning.
- The mehana
- A traditional tavern
- Shopska salad
- Almost always the first course, €7.57
- Kavarma
- Meat in a clay pot, €10.17–11.61
The mehana is the Bulgarian tavern — a menu of grills and slow-cooked stews, wooden furniture, portions built for two. A meal nearly always opens with shopska salad, the cold tarator soup runs in summer, and the main course is kavarma, meat stewed in a clay pot, or a local version named after the town itself, guvetch 'Old Tarnovo'. Banitsa is eaten in the morning, not the evening.
Shopska salad and tarator: cold before hot
Shopska salad — tomato, cucumber, pepper, onion and grated sirene cheese on top — opens almost every mehana meal, €7.57. In summer tarator joins it, a cold soup of yoghurt, cucumber and garlic, €7.11; few places keep it on the menu in winter.
The mehana's main course
Kavarma is meat — usually pork or chicken, sometimes both — stewed with onion and pepper in an individual clay pot and served still bubbling; €10.17–11.61, depending on the place. Guvetch 'Old Tarnovo', €9.66, is an oven-baked version named after the town itself, and follows the same idea — everything in one dish, served hot.
Banitsa in the morning
Banitsa with cheese, €2.60, is filo pastry layered with beaten eggs and cheese, and it is a breakfast, not an evening snack — bakeries have it fresh from the morning.
The set lunch is not a package
The set lunch, €8.30–11.70, is at some places the soup and the main course priced separately and added together, not a fixed combination — what you pick changes the total. For dinner in a restaurant, a main course without drinks runs €10–12; the same kavarma does not cost the same everywhere, so it is worth checking the menu before sitting down.
Prices per portion, no drinks; mehana portions are often meant to share.
Before you go
Short answers to what people ask most before setting out.
What is kavarma?
Meat stewed with onion and pepper in an individual clay pot, served still bubbling; €10.17–11.61 depending on the restaurant.
When is banitsa eaten?
In the morning, as breakfast; €2.60 at a bakery.
Is the set lunch a fixed price?
Not always — at some places €8.30–11.70 is the soup and main course priced separately and added together, so the total changes with what you order.
Ready for Veliko Tarnovo?
Where to next
The best time to visit Veliko Tarnovo
→One date reshapes a trip here — the free summer show at Tsarevets — and one spoils it, ice on the steep…
Plovdiv · 126 km
→A Roman theatre, the cobbles of the Old Town and the crooked lanes of Kapana, all on one hill and in the quarter below it.
How well does Veliko Tarnovo suit you?
→Six questions: a score for this place and others like it.
Front row for the next trip
Leave your email and we'll let you know when a new destination or story goes up.