American Rory Miller has been living in Bulgaria for over 15 years. Initially, he was involved in craft beer production. A few years ago, Rory participated in a popular cooking reality show. He has been mastering the subtleties of traditional Bulgarian cuisine for years. He has worked as a head chef in several restaurants and has founded fast-food establishments. In 2023, Rory published the book „Eyeball It: Village Culinary Adventures“. This is his first book featuring culinary journeys through Bulgarian villages, where he collects tasty local recipes and meets local people.

At the beginning of your stay here, you were involved in craft beer production. Did you quit this business, or you just put it on hold? Is there any craft beer culture in Bulgaria?

“Good question and it is still relevant after 10 years. I have a sort of a family history with craft beer. My dad was in the business and we started with home brewing, which I did here as well. I started home brewing some beer in Bulgaria, because I couldn’t find the beer that I liked. So I decided to make some beer that I like and it just kind of snowballed. I got really inspired and motivated to show other people this beer, because there was no craft beer here. And I was doing this for almost ten years. It was an interesting idea and people were interested in it, so we started putting together a team to make the first craft beer company in Bulgaria. After some unfortunate drama with previous partners, one company finished, I started another company and I dealt with that for some 10 years. It’s a hard business. It’s a very slow industry. In America it took 40 years to have this sort of culture for craft beer. It’s hard and if you don’t have a financial pillow it can be difficult. I quit doing craft beer professionally and I just keep doing it as a hobby. So it’s a passion now. It’s not a business for me”.

The book “Na Oko/Eyeball It: Village Culinary Adventures” hit the market In 2023. How did it all begin?

"As I mentioned I got really interested in cooking food, everything culinary through the beer. Obviously I started to drink beer without eating a lot of food. My initial idea was similar to the beer, because there was a lot of food that I couldn’t find in Bulgaria so I just decided to make it. I made it, I gave it to other people to try and they liked it. And again I built on that and I kept doing it because I was missing food that I wanted to eat again and I wanted to show people some food they had not tried. So that was the beginning of the culinary thing. And it just slowly developed. It was nothing really serious until somebody asked me to go into a popular culinary TV format. Things got more serious with that and after that culinary format I took the culinary direction and left alcohol behind. And that culinary direction led me to participate in a program where this organization would go to different villages in Bulgaria with the idea to help out people to repaint a school, build a bus stop, etc. So it’s kind of volunteering, but for me was also a great opportunity as a foreigner who had only lived in Sofia and seen only Sofia life to see other parts of Bulgaria. We went to northwest of Bulgaria around Vidin.

I was in a village called Negovanovtsi where I stayed for about 3 weeks with a family. I was a bit older than the other people that were helping out. My goal was to get to know the people I was staying with, the grandmas, the grandpas, we had really interesting stories to talk about and I got this idea to go around all these grandmas and grandpas and collect some interesting recipes so I could learn a bit more about Bulgarian food, because I did not know much about it. And through that process and just talking to these people I really glimpse into what real Bulgaria is. And I can confidently say that that is real Bulgaria, not most of the things that happen in the city here. The strongest motivator for people to speak, communicate, discuss their lives and to be relaxed was while they were cooking or while there were eating and drinking.

So this medium, this way of talking to people through food was great, because I love cooking and eating, and it took me to where I wanted to be and find all this information about life and what it’s like to be living a life that is slower, more honest, more real. And I decided that I had to keep doing that even outside of that particular village. I wanted to do that all over Bulgaria and talk to as many people as possible. So it came from that and from the organization called “Baba Residence”. They are still doing these things in different villages and it is a really great initiative that helps a lot of people”.

Can you name some authentic dishes that made the biggest impression on you during your culinary journey?

“There was one in particular that was really interesting. It is called Byal Muzh. I figured it would be interesting and it was. It was in a village again in the Northwest called Salash which is close to the Serbian border. We went there and the first day we arrived we had to make the cheese, because the main ingredient in Byal Muzh is fresh cheese. We used sheep’s cheese. We made it from scratch. We made the cheese the first day. It was an interesting experience for me, because as I guy from the city I never made cheese. The next day was the actual cooking. We had to heat up this cheese slowly on a pan on top of a fire stove and you cannot stop stirring it. And the cheese breaks down and becomes like a porridge. One way to know that it is done is that the butter separates from the cream. So it’s like a lake of butter on top. That means it is ready. The only other ingredient was a little bit of flour and a pinch of salt. The dish is very simple and obviously the focus is on the cheese. I guess the best way to eat Byal Muzh is with some bread and Rakia. It is a very good example of a food that doesn’t look good, but when you taste it, it’s a completely different story. It was amazing for me to have this ugly-looking thing, really simple, no ingredients almost and it just tastes delicious. This was the first kind of a wow dish that I had in the village and they all ended up great-tasting dishes, all completely different, but really great tasting. 

One thing they had in common was that they all did not look good and appetizing, but you have to appreciate the food for its taste and smell. I can also name a couple really interesting village cocktails, because in the village the grandpas would often drink. In Negovanovtsi there was a grandpa who told me that he had not drunk water for 15 years. It makes sense in Bulgarian- water is not for drinking, its only for cleaning. All he did was drink wine, rakia, soup, coffee, but he had this cocktail that he drank all day and it was called Mechka-Bear Claw. Basically it is just red wine and lemonade or soda. Its 50% wine and 50% lemonade and he drank it all day. Another grandpa in the village of Chelopek near Vratsa had a similar drink-half rakia, half cola and he called it “Computer”. He would tell me stories like when he had nothing to do, him and grandma would go inside with a glass of “Computer” and watch “Walker, Texas Ranger”. It was very surreal sometimes. So there were a couple of cocktails that I enjoy reinventing and remaking them at some events. Otherwise, food-wise, the most amazing meals I had were in the Rhodope Mountains. It’s a very common meal- Kachamak, but in all of the villages it was always the grandmas cooking. The only recipe I had when a grandpa was cooking was in the village of Dryanovo. He made us Kachamak and was the oldest guy in the village, but he knew this recipe by heart and had all these original tools for making it and the whole process was really interesting. But the Kachamak there was unbelievable. The ingredients are so simple and it doesn’t really matter how much you put in there. It is the quality of the products and the ingredients that make every meal amazing”.

What else did you see when you stayed at these places and villages?

“The idea for the book in the beginning was to make a recipe book. That quickly changed. Even after the first village that we visited, we realized that cooking is good, important and interesting, but it’s so less important that the actual people cooking. They just had so many things to say, so many lessons to teach that you could never really learn in any city. 

So the focus went towards them and what they had to say and what they had to share. These people did not really have anybody to talk to, nobody listened to them. All they want for the rest of their life is for someone to sit down and listen to them with interest. You see how they react and how enthusiastic and emotional they get with their stories, and that moment really made them happy. I was happy as well. My life has been improved emotionally. 

So it really became about the people and what they had to say and share. A lot of people think that people in the village and their stories are all the same, but they are not. I would definitely sit down with someone that is from a village and listen to them, hang out with them and spend time with them than anybody from a city. Somebody from the city would just complain and cry about stupid little things and in the village you listen to someone and that person brings everything into perspective and you understand the balance much better”.

Last year you presented your book in the United States and Canada. Could you tell us more about this trip?

“It was a great trip. We managed to organize events in six cities- three in Canada (Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal) and three in the USA (Chicago, New York and Seattle). It was surprising. I did not know what to expect. I was happy to go back, especially go to Seattle and see my family. I was surprised that there was a very large turnout. I never realized that there were so many Bulgarians in all of these cities. It was really interesting for me that all these people were living outside of Bulgaria for such a long time and they had strong interest in what I thought about their country. I met a lot of these peoples’ children or people who had Bulgarian roots, but unfortunately they did not speak Bulgarian. And that inspired me and pushed me to get the English version out. So we really hope to get this book out, especially for the Bulgarian diaspora in these cities, but also in all the cities in the United States, Canada and England. I hope to go back and do another tour with the English version of the book”. 

You are planning to write a second part of “Na Oko”, are you?

“I wanted to start last year, but it was too difficult with the winter and the other book. So we have plans. We have already been to a couple of villages, but we are expecting to produce something along the line of a second “Na Oko” focusing more on the younger generations, not only grandmas and grandpas, but their grandchildren. We really want to include different areas of Bulgaria this time. We have already been to a couple villages in Strandzha, so I really want to write more about Strandzha. This is a very mysterious and kind of forgotten area of Bulgaria, very wild and beautiful. So, there are plans and we are already doing it slowly. The first book took two-three years to write. Hopefully we will do the second one a little faster. May be this year we can put it all together and have a book ready by Christmas”.

Do foreigners in Bulgaria show interest in Bulgarian cuisine or they mostly look for their own, traditional food?

“I think it’s definitely both. Obviously when you are a tourist you want to try some local cuisine, if you are here for a short time. I know foreigners that are here for a long time, work here and find local cuisine really interesting. Of course you get nostalgic, you miss home and you want something from back home. So it’s kind of a mixture of both”.

Besides being a chef, you’re also a volunteer. Could you briefly tell us about your volunteer missions?

“During the Covid-19 pandemic I was a chef and this industry immediately died, so I was home. However, I could not just sit at home and do nothing. I did not care about the money and I just wanted to do something to help. I wanted this bad situation to pass as quickly as possible. I volunteered to do some basic things in hospitals. I was helping mostly at the Military Medical Hospital in Sofia in the beginning when it was the scariest there. When things calmed down, I went back to my normal life. As regards the war in Ukraine, I was shocked and horrified with everything. I saw people suffering. I knew Ukrainians here and I knew they needed help. My role basically was driving to the affected areas and delivering essential goods, medicines and food. I did that many times. I was helping mostly in the first year. It was more dramatic for me than volunteering in the hospital. In the first year we brought a lot of refugees back, mostly women and children. It was a hard year or two, but I am proud of that and I think we did a lot to help”.

Do you celebrate Bulgarian feasts since you have been here for such a long time?

 “In the last couple of years around the book people were inviting me at their places to take part at different celebrations and feasts and it’s always fun and we always eat too much. All these folklore festivals are just hilarious and they are fun, so I enjoy it. I have experienced everything around the holidays. It was very interesting in the beginning. Now I have a son and we love to celebrate the Bulgarian holidays. If I can, I also sneak in some American traditions, but mostly we try to celebrate all the Bulgarian holidays and keep the traditions as much as possible”. 

See also: 

• Baba Residence project bridges diverse village life with urban technological resources

• Grandma Residence

Photos: Rory Miller; Kostadin Atanasov