GABRIEL AND GABRIELA. Even their names suggest a special compatibility.

Married for 14 years, the Botezans are now also partners in Bar Gabi, which opened in Hazel Park in October. They describe Bar Gabi as a modern Romanian restaurant. About 60 percent of its menu is influenced by traditional Romanian flavors. The rest of the menu features pasta, steak and other items driven by their creative tastes.

Gabriel is savory. Gabriela is sweet. That is, in terms of the menu. Gabriel is head chef, and Gabriela is pastry chef.

Both Gabriel and Gabriela grew up in Romania, he in Bucharest and she in Cluj-Napoca in the Transylvania region. Gabriel came to the United States in 2001 and Gabriela came in 2006. They met through common friends in Michigan in 2012.

While the culture and food traditions of their homeland underlie everything at the restaurant, the food is very much an innovative endeavor.

“The Romanian flavors are there, but the way we present a dish may be more modern,” says Gabriel. The Romanian-inspired dishes on the menu include food that Gabriel describes as “staples” from his childhood. There’s a beef and potato goulash, a schnitzel made with a bone-in pork chop, a chicken pâté, and mititei—a type of skinless sausage.

The recipes reflect their experiences of cooking and socializing with their families. “Any gathering had to have goulash, especially in the colder winter months,” says Gabriela. “Everyone would hang out in the yard, cook some goulash and have some mulled wine.” Gabriel adds, “It was always cooked in a cast-iron pot over an open fire.”

Even then, there were lots of variations in what was considered a “traditional” goulash. “You go to one neighborhood, and they’ll cook the goulash one way. One mile away, they’ll say ‘No, we don’t put that ingredient in ours,’” says Gabriel. Their goulash features braised beef, potatoes and red bell peppers. The Bar Gabi twist on the recipe is that it is all beef and includes potatoes. Traditional recipes usually rely on pork, and often include noodles rather than potatoes.

Bar Gabi’s menu also reflects its chefs’ earlier careers. Gabriel attended culinary school in Austin, Texas. While in the area, he worked with chef Bruce Auden. He credits Auden with opening his mind to the possibilities of mixing and matching cuisines.

“He’s the one chef that is similar to what we do here,” he says. “Bruce reinvented British cuisine with a Texas/ Mexico flair. He would do things like make a Yorkshire pudding, but stuff it with birria beef.”

From 2012 to 2019, Gabriel worked at the acclaimed Southfield Italian restaurant Bacco Ristorante. He credits chefs Luciano Del Signore and Marco Dalla Fontana with helping him perfect his Italian cooking. Then, he began to experiment.

“I took that knowledge and thought ‘Maybe I’ll switch this with this.’ So, the same concept, but different,” he says. That approach is evident at Bar Gabi, where Italian dishes play a big part in the menu. There are three housemade pasta selections—meat, seafood and vegetarian—that change monthly.

Gabriela’s baked goods also show an Italian influence with focaccia and tiramisu among the offerings.

A good example of Gabriel’s creative approach to cooking is what he calls his “all-time favorite” dish: a mash-up of a classic pasta, traditionally flavored with cheese and black pepper, and braised beef. He explains: “I love cacio e pepe and I love braised short ribs. So, I take the braised short ribs and I add them to my cacio e pepe. I make a Parmesan foam and spray it on, and add more black pepper and Parmesan.” “I put my own spin on things,” he says. “Usually when I think of something that tastes really good to me, 99.9 percent of the time it’s tasty.”

Gabriela’s work as a professional pastry chef also has ties to Bacco Ristorante. She had cooked regularly with her family growing up, but her passion for pastries didn’t come until later when she was an adult living in the United States. “I missed the flavor of European pastries,” she says. “They’re less sweet than a lot of the desserts here in the U.S.,” she says.

In her spare time, she started watching cooking videos and taught herself to make classic European pastries. Soon she was baking for friends and small events. Then, one day the pastry chef at Bacco did not show up for work. Gabriel called to see if she could fill in. After an initial reluctance, she went. She says at some point in that first hectic day, she realized, “I really love this.”

“It started off there and it never really stopped,” Gabriela says. At Bar Gabi, the sweets menu features Romanian pastries like Cremes, a caramelized pastry with vanilla cream and powdered sugar, as well Italian classics like tiramisu. Preparation for the complicated pastries can be a multi-day process. For her tiramisu, it takes one day to bake the ladyfingers, one day to make the filling and a third to let it meld together.

“My targets are the people who say, ‘I really don’t eat sweets,’” says Gabriela. “That’s when we hook ’em,” Gabriel adds with a laugh. “They’ll finish the whole plate.” The duo got their start cooking Romanian food together in the Detroit area when they started hosting popups and takeovers in 2019. Their collaboration in business is a natural extension of their married life, according to Gabriela.

“I feel so fortunate that we work so well together,” she says. “It’s almost like we created this little, small heaven of ours.”

Today, Bar Gabi is housed in the same space as their early pop-ups, the former Frame Bar on John R in Hazel Park, which they purchased. The main dining space gives off a mysterious, dark vibe with its black walls, sparkling chandeliers and burning candles.

Future plans include finishing an event space they are calling the Peștera, or cave room, which will also lean into the cozy dark-and-stormy-night atmosphere. With warm weather, they plan to open the Grădină, or garden room, an outdoor dining area that will be a bright, plant-filled space.

“We loved this place when we were doing pop-ups here,” Gabriela says, “and then finally, the stars aligned.” Although the couple had looked at other possible sites for opening their own business over the years, nothing felt right until now. Now they’ve been overwhelmed by the welcome they’ve received from new customers and familiar faces from their pop-up days.

Their biggest fans might be their daughters, aged 7 and 10. Gabriela says one of the teachers at their daughters’ school shared something just before the restaurant opened. “Your daughters are so crazy proud of you,” she says. “Everyone in the school knows what you are about to do.”

Sharon Morton is a feature and business writer working in Metro Detroit.