Sofra-Mangal Café — Restaurant in Rîșcani Sector

I have a passion for Balkan cuisine and this place offers exactly that taste. Warm atmosphere, moderate prices, friendly staff and good service. The owner is very welcoming and quite often may join you during the lunch/dinner just to chat a bit or to recommend what to eat (btw, rarely thing in Chisinau when the owner of the restaurant is so welcoming to guests). Another good point is that Sofra is a quiet place, with no loud music or people. So, if being in Chisinau you feel a bit tired of Moldovan and modern cuisine, definitely it worth visiting Sofra and taste a piece of Balkans. The meat is prepared specifically there, very tasty.

P.S. Try what the owner recommends, every time they have a kind of "specialty of the day" and you will...

4.5/5 pretty good restaurant. This isn't a true albanian restaurant as I saw some dishes that traditionally aren't served in Albania but it's good nonetheless. We had the beef chebureki, a lamb soup (forgot name), pilaf, chicken shashlik, and cevapi. The meat dishes were soooooo good. The cevapi was the best cevapi I've had in my life. It was soo tasty. And the shashlik was cooked perfectly because the meat was still very tender. They cooked the meat to perfection. In addition, the soup was good as well....

Sofra-Mangal is an absolute gem of a restaurant. I had the chebureki and lamb kofte and both were exceptional. For dessert I had a poppy seed cake with chocolate icing that blew my mind. The restaurant itself is cozy and beautifully designed with Albanian and other Balkan decor. The owner and chef, Gheorghe, is a wonderful, friendly, charismatic and funny person from an ethnic Albanian village in Southern Ukraine who will make you feel welcome and at home. I will return at the first...