TO STAY - BRAȘOV
CULINARY FEAST WITH Q U E E N OF THE HOUSE UNEXPECTED FLAVOURS Small bits of chicken will be dipped in a pinkish, sweet sauce of red currant and will be spiced up with ginger and grated orange rind. Next to it, a cascade of sour cream is poured over the hot water in which the spinach was boiled. A wooden spoon gets involved right away and vigorously stirs the mixture until it becomes creamy, releasing a scent of freshly picked herbs all over the kitchen. This is how the sauce for the spinach that will be served to guests is made. The magic ingredients, that seem to be cooking the food by themselves, are not on the menu of an expensive fusion restaurant. These are the dishes offered to guests at the small guest house, The Country Hotel, in the village of Hărman, Brașov county. “All my recipes start from old ones, but the secret of my food lies in the details,” says Marcela Cosnean, a former language teacher, who followed her dream to carve out a new life, aligned with her dreams. During the day, Marcela likes to look after her guests who are visiting her fancy guest house and she likes to cook for them. Now and then, whenever she gets a few
Marcela that she has created a world she relishes, tailored to her dreams. In fact, Marcela IS the guest house. Wherever you look, from the kitchen, where she has lined up spice jars like toy soldiers on the window sill, to keep it neat, to the bed linens, curtains and tablecloths that match each other – Marcela’s mark can be seen everywhere. She is the one who, with attention and warmth, turns customers into guests, discovers Pumpkin soup their culinary desires and translates them into delicious food, listens to their life stories and compliments them with her own brand of the soothing herbal “Tea of Transylvania”.
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THE BEGINNING OF THE STORY After Marcela gathered together all her design ideas and a group of skilled handymen, she began renovating the house of her dreams. Transylvanian Saxon households of long ago included an entire universe that gave the family everything they needed: cattle stalls, stables, pigsties and a barn. Each found a new meaning following Marcela’s redesign. The former stables became guest rooms and hosts a studio and a gallery that holds regular artisanal fairs that wear the house brand name: M A R C E L L A. There are many visible traits of those typical traditional Transylvanian Saxon houses, some that date as far back as the mid 12th century: massive wooden gates, the house is L-shaped, with large windows, thick walls and tall rooms.
moments to spare, she withdraws into her workshop, where she can let her creativity loose. Sketches for children’s clothing or models of women’s evening wear, bed linens from natural fabrics, and fabulous Christening Gowns, all of them fully complete the world created by Marcela. One can surely say of 30
Her house became a guesthouse in the early 1990s, after Marcela fell in love with it. She was looking for a house to turn into her home. After months of intensive searching, she found in Hărman a white house that made her heart beat faster: “It was so beautiful, with its dyed masonry eyebrows, it was love at first sight.”