In the kitchen, autumn arrives with a different rhythm. We use the oven more, cook more slowly and return to ingredients with strong flavour: mushrooms, aged cheeses and meat that needs time.
When I started working on the new menu, I began with simple things: porcini, chanterelles, house-made bread, roasted vegetables and fire. Then, together with the team, we looked for the best form for each of them. Many of the dishes start from a familiar taste, worked with the care and precision of a contemporary kitchen. We did not want to complicate things just to make something new. For me, a good menu should be easy to understand when it reaches the table, even if there are many hours of work behind it.
Bread opens the meal
I like a meal to begin with something to share. Bread does this naturally. It lands in the middle, you tear off a piece and pass it on. We have whey bread with wholemeal flour and walnuts, sourdough bread and focaccia with garlic and rosemary. We make them in-house and serve them with porcini butter and cold-pressed sunflower oil. It is a simple start, but it says quite clearly how we see food at Sens. Ingredients must have flavour, and time must be allowed to do its work.
Porcini, chanterelles and roasted vegetables
Mushrooms are among the ingredients I look forward to every autumn. Porcini have an intense flavour and go very well with butter and warm bread. Chanterelles are more delicate, and we use them in two different dishes. We put them next to the beef tartare, where they bring a note of the forest without covering the taste of the meat. They also appear alongside Blidari trout, with artisanal gnocchi, fermented sour cream and lovage. We have also kept the aubergine with roasted vegetables on the menu. Onion, pepper and garlic are ordinary ingredients, but roasting changes their taste. They become sweeter, more intense and no longer need much around them.
Dishes that take time
Some flavours cannot be achieved quickly. The bone-in Mangalica pork broth has to be cooked slowly for the texture to be right. We serve it with thyme polenta and burduf cheese. We are not trying to change the familiar taste of polenta and cheese. We are trying to show it at its best. The same idea runs through the “Meat — Fire — Time” selection. We have dry-aged beef, a bone-in veal chop and picanha cooked sous-vide, then finished over embers. Technique helps us control the texture, but it is the fire that gives the final flavour. At the table, explanations about technique matter less. What matters is that the meat is cooked properly and has flavour.
What we keep and what we change
I like to start from something recognisable and change only as much as needed. In the artisanal ravioli with venison ragù, the meat stays at the centre. Around it we built a Praid cheese sauce, which brings roundness, and pumpkin seed oil, which ties the dish to the season. Breaded chicken thigh is a dish everyone knows. We kept the crust and worked on the rest of the plate: potatoes, onion and browned butter, plus a sauce of roasted green tomatoes. The crust and the butter call for something acidic, and the green tomatoes do exactly that. With the balmoș we changed almost nothing: cornmeal, sour cream and buffalo milk, sheep’s cheese. It is a dish that does not ask to be changed. It just has to be made with good ingredients and with care.
To finish
For dessert we followed the same direction. The queso tart with burduf cheese and wild blueberries combines the saltiness of the cheese with the acidity of the fruit. The cozonac is soaked in black cherry juice and served with chocolate mousse. We also have a dulce de leche coulant with ice cream and pistachio. These are desserts that start from familiar flavours, without copying the exact form we know from home.
For me, this is the autumn menu: warm bread, mushrooms, roasted vegetables,
slow-cooked meat and a few flavours that bring something familiar to mind.– chef Silviu Atanasie
The autumn menu is available at Sens from 18 September 2026 and runs throughout the season.
