Chisinau - Post Report Question and Answers
What typical restaurants, food delivery services, and/or takeout options are popular among expatriates?
Apps like Glovo have a variety of restaurants. Delivery is slower for restaurants than in the U.S. but faster for groceries. - Sep 2023
Not many Western chains are here yet except McDonalds, but there are a lot of decent local restaurants. There are dozens of pizzerias, several burger places, and a number of high-end restaurants that are nice for dining out. There are a couple of Chinese places, a lot of Italian places, a faux-British pub, a faux-Irish pub... really pretty much everything you'd expect in a small European city. There are even two or three sushi places, of which at least one is okay. For dining with kids, we can recommend Andy's Pizza, a local chain with about a dozen restaurants around the center of Chisinau (if you're American, this is basically the Moldovan Denny's).If you're lonesome for American cooking, Smokehouse Barbecue is run by a former Peace Corps guy from Virginia and has pretty good smoked meats and barbecue in a pleasant atmosphere. Coffee shop culture has exploded in the last few years. Cafe Tucano is another Moldovan chain; it's basically the local Starbucks, and is not bad at all. If you want takeout, go online to straus.md which is a consolidated delivery service for about 50 local restaurants. - Apr 2019
A wide choice of restaurants around town. Prices are reasonable. - Feb 2014
McDonald's is the biggest Western chain here for fast food, and I think there might be a Sbarro at the mall. Other than that, there are many low cost Moldovan restaurants. La Placinte is kind of like a Moldovan Boston Market: lots of fresh, tasty, and low cost "homestyle" dishes at a low cost. Fancy restaurants also exist, you can almost fool yourself in thinking you are in a major European capital at some of them: Loft, Grill House, etc. What is missing is any type of decent pizza (surprising, considering the huge number of Moldovans who've spent time in Italy, combined with the availability of Italian flour and really good made-in-Moldova mozzarella), and Mexican food that even remotely resembles the real thing. Moldovans love garlic, but that's about as spicy as it gets. - Aug 2011
There are several McDonald's in town along with a few local fast food restaurants. I'm not too fond of any, but that probably has more to do with personal taste. The number of decent restaurants has increased while we've been here. Still...there are fewer than you may expect for a capital city this size in Europe. The quality of the food is often disappointing. It isn't bad, but it often lacks inspiration and service is seldom very good. Fortunately, the restaurants also don't tend to cost too much either. - May 2010
McDonald's and it reasonably priced - Mar 2010
