Fortunate day! Thanks to working extra hours this week (and ignoring I had extra time until today), I left work early today at lunchtime. Yes!

Thanks to a new local app I recently downloaded, I discovered Boon by Moldova Restaurant, offering the finest in Moldovan cuisine. Why not?

At lunchtime, Boon is a sleepy place. Only the bar is impressively packed with wines, liquor bottles and a few bored restaurant workers shouting in Moldovan (or is it Romanian?). I can imagine this place is hopping at night with hip-hop Romanian music, like the stuff I’m listening to right now.

Anyway, they have a lunch special for $11.95 (11am-3pm):

Soup or salad = Supa sau Salata

Main course = Fel principal

Sides = Garnitura

Drinks = Bauturi

Here’s what I ordered:

1. Salata Primavera: Spring salad with romaine lettuce, radishes, grape tomatoes and shaved hard-boiled eggs, with a vinegar creamy dressing.

2. Snitel pui = Chicken snitzel with a fried egg on top, a herbed yogurt sauce, with pickled shaved cabbage and carrots.

3. Piure = Mashed potatoes 

4. Compot = Homemade fruit punch

So much food! I didn’t expect so many eggs (how does one shave eggs?), and a part of me did wish that I did order something more traditionally Moldovan, like mamaliga, which is a cake-like polenta. But it’s made with cheese, so, no… I need a taster next time I’m here.

I wasn’t expecting the salad to be so big and tall (I ate a lot of it before I took the picture), and while I didn’t like the dressing that much, everything else was tasty. The snitzel was damn good. Chicken was juicy and tender, the breading brown and crispy. The fried egg was definitely surprising.

The compot punch was definitely homemade. I wish that there was some booze, but maybe at another time at night…

It wasn’t what I pictured in my mind, but this lunch was a pleasant surprise. I may not eat again today.

Enjoy!