site.btaBulgaria's Snezhanka Salad Tops TasteAtlas Ranking of 50 Best-Rated Cucumber Dishes

The popular Bulgarian Snezhanka salad has been ranked first among the best cucumber dishes by global food guide TasteAtlas, placing ahead of Greek tzatziki and Turkish cacik. 

Made with strained yogurt, cucumbers, garlic, dill, oil, and salt, Snezhanka received a rating of 4.3 in the updated ranking of the 50 Best-Rated Cucumber Dishes.

The Greek version of the salad, called tzatziki, follows in second place with 4.2, while Turkiye’s cacik ranks 11th with a score of 4.

Third place goes to the Greek salad horiatiki, or village salad, prepared with tomatoes, red onions, cucumber, and - depending on the region - olives, green peppers, feta cheese, oregano, and a dressing of olive oil with lemon or vinegar.

Mexico’s aguachile, a spicy dish with shrimp, cucumber, red onion, and lime, comes fourth, followed by Peru’s uchucuta sauce, made with chili peppers, grated cucumber, peanuts, condensed milk, huacatay leaves, onion, and cilantro.

The ranking also features Bulgaria’s tarator, which places 12th with a rating of 3.9. The shopska salad is surprisingly absent from the list, despite the inclusion of similar salads from Greece, Turkiye, Serbia, Israel, Iran, and Afghanistan.

The fact that cacik did not make the top 10 has sparked disappointment in neighbouring Turkiye.

The Turkish newspaper Dunya wrote: “This time TasteAtlas has disappointed us! Turkiye failed to make it into the top 10,” adding that the ranking reflects years of culinary rivalry between Greek tzatziki and Turkish cacik.

The ranking is based on the ratings of the TasteAtlas audience, with a series of mechanisms that recognize real users and that ignore bot, nationalist or local patriotic ratings, and give additional value to the ratings of users that the system recognizes as knowledgeable. As of January 24, 2026, a total of 940,959 ratings had been submitted, of which 610,190 were recognized as legitimate.