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Sonny Side's Romanian food tour reaches beyond the restaurant table

Chicken-neck stew and polenta anchor a visit to Pata Rât, where Roma hosts explain the circumstances behind their everyday meals.

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Best Ever Food Review Show Story of November 9, 2026Trari Newsroom

Why this story? 1,386,576 views so far, and here is what is inside it.

Gypsy Slum Food | Eating with Europe’s Most Hated People

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1:15Sonny tries stuffed cabbage with sour cream before a smoked pork and bean soup served in bread.
9:57Former resident Alex Fechete shows the settlement's living conditions and outdoor water access.
13:03Eva prepares chicken-neck stew with cornmeal porridge as an inexpensive family meal.
20:10Alex explains how identification documents can create barriers to employment and housing.
25:47A mansion visit introduces self-proclaimed Roma king Dorin Cioabă and a spit-roasted pork feast.
34:12Sonny questions the contrast between Cioabă's lavish surroundings and poverty in the communities he visited.

Eva cooks chicken necks into a stew and serves them with mămăligă, Romania's cornmeal porridge. For Sonny Side, the meal becomes a way into a conversation about feeding a family when choices are limited.

Best Ever Food Review Show's Romanian documentary begins more conventionally: stuffed cabbage with sour cream, then smoked pork and bean soup served in a hollowed bread bowl. Food creators Codruț and Izabela join Sonny at the restaurant before the journey moves to Pata Rât, a Roma settlement beside a landfill outside Cluj-Napoca.

There, activist and former resident Alex Fechete shows Sonny the outdoor water access and introduces him to residents. Eva's cooking gives the visit its practical center. Later, Alex's aunt Susana serves sausage and potato stew with bread, explaining that more expensive meat dishes are rarely affordable.

Alex also explains barriers beyond the kitchen. He says the paper identification available to some residents makes finding work difficult, and recounts his efforts to secure grant-funded apartments for families displaced from their homes. The documentary includes a sponsored BetterHelp segment.

Its final food stop makes a striking contrast: a mansion visit with Dorin Cioabă, who presents himself as an international king of the Roma people. Spit-roasted pork, grilled chicken in garlic-tomato brine and cabbage-and-meat stew fill out the feast. Sonny asks about the contrast between the lavish setting and the communities he has visited.

The episode has drawn about 1.4 million views, but its central question is not culinary novelty. It is how much a visitor can understand by sitting down to eat. Alex supplies the final thought: "Please, don't judge the entire group for what one individual is doing."

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What viewers say

I didn’t even realize chicken neck was a weird food…. It’s always my favourite part in my moms chicken soup
@lunahanifa6037See it on YouTube
i really hope this is not the only video in Romania...
@adrianproton8466See it on YouTube

Public comments from the video's page on YouTube