The Valea Verde team is made up of people from the village of Cund and the villages around it. Many of them have been here since Valea Verde’s earliest days: they cooked for the very first guests, looked after the first restored Saxon houses and grew alongside the place.
Today, they are the ones carrying the story forward: the same recipes, the same village suppliers and the same care for every guest who walks through our door.
From right here in the village
For us, working “at home” means a lot. The people who cook, welcome you, prepare the houses and look after the garden and the horses are neighbours, relatives and friends, people who know every path, every garden and every producer in the valley. You can taste it on your plate, feel it in the houses you stay in and see it in the way we welcome you.
What would Cund be like without Valea Verde?
“Desolate. With fewer people. The village has grown a lot. If it wasn’t here, people could take the bus to Târgu Mureș or Târnăveni and work in a factory, but it’s really something to have a job in the village. You can have a job but still do things at home.” — Ildiko Kopan, Executive Chef
Ildiko Kopan, Executive Chef
Ildiko worked for years in the kitchen of the village farm. When the farm closed, she stayed home and looked after animals for more than 12 years. She then took a cooking course and stepped into the Valea Verde kitchen on the restaurant’s very first day, with more than thirty guests at the table. She has been here ever since, and today she leads the kitchen as Executive Chef.
“I used to work on the village’s state farm, in the kitchen; I was always making potato stew and soup. […] Working in the restaurant has changed me completely. […] I’ve got more independence.”
“The most satisfying thing is when someone comes into the kitchen and thanks us, tells us that their meal was very good. Not so long ago, a young woman from abroad told us she’d been looking for the best place to eat in Romania, and when she’d looked online, Cund had come up. When she reached the village, she thought it must have been a mistake. After lunch, she came into the kitchen and thanked us. I felt so emotional, almost as if I was going to cry.”
The story continues
Valea Verde began as a story about a small Transylvanian village, about Saxon houses brought back to life and about food cooked with whatever the land around us gives. Today, that story is carried forward by its people: those who have been here from the start and those who have joined along the way.
The same houses, the same garden, the same truffles from the surrounding woods, and the same joy when a guest walks into the kitchen to say thank you.
