Us Romanians claim that we have some particular dishes, that are original to our country, when in fact they are adaptations from various occupying cultures throughout history. I guess the most emblematic is the traditional "Sarmale" which in essence are meatballs with rice rolled in kraut, fresh cabbage leaves or grapevine leaves, and boiled. You can find variations of this dish in other cultures in the Balkans, most notably being the greeks and the turks - the latter not eating pork sarmale anyway. Tripe soup is another traditional meal, and while you have cultures that use a cow's stomach to cook a soup, ours has a local note with plenty of garlic and sour cream. Eastern Romanians (former Moldavians) eat a lot of polenta, which basically corn flour mixed in boiled water and stirred to a thick paste. I guess the only dish, so to speak as it's not truly a dish, that I didn't find in any similar form in other cultures is the "mujdei" - in its simplest form a dip/sauce made from mashed garlic, slowly mixed with oil, herbs, spices, and water. Variations exist.
I was born and grew up in the largest city of the former Banat Independent Principality under the Habsburg empire, in fact in my family my grandfather was the first generation to be born under Romanian rule and government. I am used to the german style chicken soup, plenty of schnitzel, cartofen salad, a variety of sausage ranging from your classic pork/game, to blood sausage, liver sausage and so on. In fact Empress Maria Theresia brought many people in order to colonize the region from Baden Wurttemberg, the Ulm area (which I am thrilled to say I get to visit again next week), that call themselves schwabben. From them we have spetzle (some sort of german pasta), apple strudel, speck (smoked pork leg), etc. My wife comes from what was formerly known as the Duchy of Transylvania, so she is used to a bit more of a Hungarian influence in her cuisine. I know that we don't always see eye to eye as she likes her pork knee bean stew, while I can't stand it. I later found out that pork knee is also big in bohemian and bavarian cultures. Cabbage and cumin soup is another big hit where she comes from, and spicy peppers are a must eat on a daily basis. Generally the Germans eat fatty food, and it was well understood why, since most land Germans in our area were farmers, which meant lots of manual labor demanding a high caloric meal. It was not unusual for my grandfather, after a day o collecting hay, to have raw lard, bread, cheese, onions and tomatoes for lunch. We try to stay away from traditional stuff, and eat less meat nowadays. The food is tasty as hell, but it will send you to an early grave, especially if you have a desk job and over indulge in it.
Our traditional drink is tzuica or palinka, which is a plum brandy. The Germans call it schnapps, and it can be made from fruit other than plum - my personal favorite being quince. I don't know why Romanians made a claim over it, as being the inventors in the Ardeal area. I also know that we had a fight with the Hungarians over this in as far who gets to claim it as a national heritage thing, and honestly I don't know what came out of that. At the end of the day, I like may rakjia (as we call it in Banat) and I prefer drinking it over any other type of had liquor.