It must be the season of the festival because here we are for the second week in a row hitting the circuit. Who are those pop stars rockin’ it onstage today? I can’t say but I can tell you that they are playing the hits, especially if you are a bit older and Romanian. The Romanian detail is important because that’s the clue to the theme of today’s event. The other detail I’m learning quickly about Serb Fest 2019 and Romania Fest 2019 is that these are fundraisers for the church that supports the community. With this bit of knowledge, our visits become more valuable to us as we know we are contributing to helping sustain a culture that remains important to a generation that grew up knowing these sights, sounds, and traditions.

The most obvious thing about not just this Romanian community but the Serbian too is that religion plays a large role and the number of people from these countries who live here in the Valley is still quite low, relatively speaking. (In comparison to the large Hindu population Phoenix has or the Hispanic community.) I have no way of knowing what the percentage is of people who come out but I’m guessing that the expense might limit participation to some degree. We easily spent $40 on each visit and that was just from buying entry and lunch.

Today’s food was a treat with Mititei being the first dish we sampled. These little sausages are nearly identical to the more well-known Serbo-Croatian sausage known as Cevapi or Cevapcici. Next on the menu were Sarmale or stuffed cabbage rolls with a side of sour cream. So far everything was pretty basic Slavic staples. The Romanian Fest 2019 culinary award however should go to the Ciorba de Burta. What is Ciorba de Burta you ask? It is tripe soup. Describing it simply as tripe soup would be a disservice because until you mix in the extra sour cream and more importantly the ramekin of garlic sauce with Romani power, the dish might be considered just okay. With the amount of garlic that we mixed into our large container of soup, we were enjoying the flavors of Romania for the next day and a half. We finished our visit with Caroline trying a Romanian beer for the first time as we sat and listened to some ladies singing traditional folk songs. Maybe you noticed we said nothing about chimney cake? Well they had those too but our festival allowance was now gone, a good thing as we really are trying to watch what we eat.