Banitsa Festival Verbitsa | БАНИЦА Фестивал село Върбица

It was such an unexpected discovery, I was walking the streets of Varna one day, when I passed Rubina Travel Agency and noticed an image that had my favourite pastry that covering a table. Upon a closer look, I realised, I couldn't understand a word of. it because it was all written in Bulgarian. Lol.

I went inside and asked, in my very broken Bulgarian way, if they had an English version of the event. They replied no and told me to check their website. I took a photo of the advert I’d seen and thought to myself, worst case scenario, I can Google Translate it later

Upon further investigation, I discovered that the agency was planning a trip to a small village called Verbitsa, where they would be hosting a Banitsa Festival—my favourite Bulgarian pie. I tried to find images of it from previous years, but had no luck. I couldn’t get any information about it at all. I asked Facebook groups, tried researching in both English and Bulgarian, but I never seemed to get any substantial info. The best overview I had was what the travel agency had written about it, and even that was vague. From what I could understand, people from all villages and cities were invited to present their own variation of a banitsa to be tasted and reviewed. What more could I ask for? I was going to be in a situation where endless banitsa flavours were at my disposal.

I managed to get the last ticket (how’s that for luck!) and on a rainy Saturday morning, we left from the Varna Cathedral at 06:00 AM to make our way to Verbitsa.

We arrived to more rain, but it didn’t stop participants from setting up their stations and preparing their creations for display and sale.

The event started promptly at 11:00 with an opening ceremony of introductions, traditional singing, and the well-known Bulgarian dance, the Horo.

I couldn’t wait any longer, and right after the ceremony, I dashed off to start trying the different varieties of banitsa that were on sale. Luckily, because we arrived early, I had already scouted the ones I wanted to try. There was one with milk and sugar—it reminded me of cornflakes. I tried a Bulgarian flag one, recreated with spinach, feta, and peppers. I went for the pepper strip, but unfortunately, the texture wasn’t great. The most surprising one turned out to be a grape variation, that I went back to buy more!

There were over 350 varieties to try, and I probably only ended up sampling seven. I had a wonderful time and would highly recommend this trip if you’re a pastry lover. You get to experience families so passionate about what they make that they can’t wait to share it with you.

If you want to see what it looked like, here’s the link to TikTok I made about it:https://vt.tiktok.com/ZSUDGsjAn/