Traditional Bulgarian cuisine excels in vegetable dishes ; the snag is trying to find places that serve them. Vegetarian restaurants ( vegetarianski restorant ) used to exist in most major towns, but began to lose their appeal in the mid-1980s as supplies of agricultural produce from the countryside deteriorated. Most of them were privatized and turned into something else.

Standard menus usually include an omelette ( omlet ), either with cheese or mushroom filling, along with kashkaval pane , hard cheese fried in breadcrumbs or batter; kartofi s sirene , french fries with grated white cheese; sirene po shopski , cheese baked in an earthenware pot with a spicy tomato sauce; and pâlneni chushki , peppers stuffed with cheese. One popular meatless dish is mishmash , scrambled eggs with chopped peppers and tomatoes; and there's also a vegetarian version of the oven-baked stew gyuvech (ask for posten gyuvech ), although in many cases this turns out to be the same thing as mishmash . Any of these would suffice as a main meal; otherwise you're limited to choosing from vegetable side dishes, which are less widely available. If you're lucky, you may encounter fried courgettes ( pârzheni tikvichki ); aubergines ( patlidzhan ) covered in yogurt ( s kiselo mlyako ); peppers stuffed with egg and cheese and fried in breadcrumbs ( chushka byurek ); eggs fried on spinach ( pârzheni yaitsa s pyure ot spanak ); or potato purée ( pyure ot kartofi ). The spiciest dish is kyopoolu - mashed aubergine with garlic and chilli.

When in doubt, use the phrase postno yadene (literally "fasting food") to ensure that you receive something that's genuinely meat free.