My name is Gabriel Ursan and this place means a great deal to me. It means friendship. It means the values we took from our grandparents, the ones nobody explains to you: you watch them being lived and you learn them. And it means the table you sit down at as though you had been home for years, even though you walked through the door ten minutes ago.
What happens at a table
You bring your friends over for a talk. You stay. You celebrate what went well, because it is a shame to keep it to yourself. You talk through the problems, because they weigh less once said out loud. You make plans, some of which actually happen. And when you need to, you lick your wounds, without anyone asking you to explain yourself.
You also argue. That is the part I love most. You argue the way people did before the internet, when nobody could pull a phone out of a pocket and settle it on the spot. The talk went on until evening and in the end we stayed friends anyway, however much we had disagreed. That, in the end, is what it means to sit at a table as though you were at home.
What I have seen in the Potîrniche family
Behind a place that feels warm and settled to you stands a family that has worked for years to keep it standing. I have watched that up close, and I want Ion’s family to know that we see it. A dream became a restaurant. A restaurant is slowly becoming a legend of the city.
It is no small thing to keep a recipe the same for twenty years. It is no small thing either to open the door at ten every morning, on match days, on holidays, and on the days you would rather sit down yourself. Respect for the people who came before us shows in things like that, not in words.
Since I was a child I dreamt of a place where the boys and girls of the neighbourhood, with their parents and their grandparents, would sit at the same table. Not at separate tables. The same one. And there, between a hot soup and a cold beer, they would argue about the problems of the world and stumble onto the thing that holds all of us together: being together, in good times and in hard ones.
I want Ciorbe La Ion to be a place where people find each other and find each other again. People of every age, from every part of town. A place where memories are told, the present is lived, new memories are made, and where in ten years we meet again, gladly.
What we carry forward
Dear Ion, to you and to your family: today, 1 August 2026, you have a new website. I made it so that it carries the tradition further, the taste further, and the friendships between all of us further, however much the years have brought us together or kept us apart.
It is a tribute to our friendship and to your stubbornness in keeping a place where people find each other again by talking. I am glad that we have our small part in a legend that will still be here after we are gone: the traditional restaurant Ciorbe La Ion. A place where every generation understands one another and speaks freely about freedom, brotherhood and a good life.
I am glad to be part of this. The table is set. We look forward to seeing you at the traditional Romanian restaurant Ciorbe La Ion.