Bar Gabi is run by Gabriel and Gabriela Botezan, a husband-and-wife team cooking Romanian food filtered through training in Metro Detroit's Italian kitchens. He handles the savory side, she runs pastry, and the menu moves between the two traditions rather than picking one.
The food spans small plates like mititei (skinless grilled sausages with mustard), langos (fried dough with feta and garlic sauce), and whipped goat cheese with horseradish, alongside heartier plates such as a deboned roast half chicken, slow-braised smoked baby-back ribs, and saramura de peste, a salt-baked striped sea bass with roasted peppers and baked polenta cake. A house-made pasta section — rigatoni with braised short rib, a seafood tagliatelle, busiate with almond-tomato pesto — nods directly to the kitchen's Italian training.
The restaurant sits in Hazel Park, just outside Detroit proper, and describes its aim as building an American audience for Romanian cooking that blends Old World technique with a more irreverent, modern point of view.
The food spans small plates like mititei (skinless grilled sausages with mustard), langos (fried dough with feta and garlic sauce), and whipped goat cheese with horseradish, alongside heartier plates such as a deboned roast half chicken, slow-braised smoked baby-back ribs, and saramura de peste, a salt-baked striped sea bass with roasted peppers and baked polenta cake. A house-made pasta section — rigatoni with braised short rib, a seafood tagliatelle, busiate with almond-tomato pesto — nods directly to the kitchen's Italian training.
The restaurant sits in Hazel Park, just outside Detroit proper, and describes its aim as building an American audience for Romanian cooking that blends Old World technique with a more irreverent, modern point of view.