Text by Anna J.Kutor

It's fair to say that until not too long ago, Warsaw's restaurant scene was a moderately monochromatic landscape limited to native meat-and-cabbage outlets, humble street-corner kebab joints and a handful of highfalutin' French and Italian eateries. But refining consumer palates coupled with the increasing popularity of dining out and the influx of wealthy immigrants and investors drove the demand for new, more diversified dining options, and today, the Polish capital boasts a sparkling tapestry of ambitious ethnic restaurants that liberate taste buds and spellbind diners with stimulating surroundings. Adventurous foodies can now easily eat their way from from Central America to China, Africa to Austria without leaving the centre of town.

Classics from the Old Continent

There are some countries that, by their time-honoured and idiosyncratic gastronomic signature, have a disproportionately large influence on the local eating culture. France is one of them. Reflecting a mosaic of regional specialties, from exotically-spiced meats and dairy-centric Norman dishes to wholesome, German-influenced Alsace cooking, and also a mind-boggling variety of world-famous cheeses and fine wines, French cuisine has long been celebrated as an icon of gourmet dining. Given its enormous breadth and depth, it's hardly surprising that some of Warsaw's most venerable fine-dining establishments take their cue from French cooking styles.

La Rotisserie, a delightfully glamorous yet intimate restaurant nestled in the five-star Le Regina hotel in Warsaw's New Town, leads the city's French-fare pack since its founding in 2004. On the lobby level of the palatial premises, built in the 18th century and meticulously-restored around the turn of the new millennium, this place oozes the romantic ambiance of an enchanted castle, with high-vaulted ceilings, warm lighting and elegant furnishings in tones of beige and brown that create the perfect clandestine refuge for its well-heeled clientele. It has a seasonally-changing menu to match the opulence, created and maintained under the leadership of star-chef Paweł Oszczyk, a talented young graduate of the Eugeniusz Pijanowski Catering School in Warsaw whose previous stops include
Hotel Bristol and the Polish Business Roundtable Club in the Sobański Palace. At La Rotisserie, 38-year-old Oszczyk dishes up innovative, contrast-filled French creations like nut-and-anise coated Challans duck, St. Jacques ragout with cauliflower, capers and cauliflower and roasted monkfish with pork shank.

Dominating the restaurant scene, far more than French food, is Italian cuisine. The holy trinity of pizza, pasta and parmesan - once the sole preserve of Italian gastronomy - has conquered the world, these palpable pleasure into readily available comfort foods. So much so, that beyond the score of nation-wide pizza chains and a few independent pizzerias, there is a smattering of pseudo-rustic trattorias and top-shelf ristorantes in every neighbourhood of Warsaw. The homey and cosy trattoria style is best illustrated at Venezia, an elaborately decorated venue with an exhaustive menu and a pleasant outdoor patio and at Chianti, subterranean epicurean enclave offering straightforward Italian dishes as well as in the cheery, family-run sister establishments of Bacio, Bacio Di Angelo and Piccolo Bacio which all retain unique charm and a standout quality of taste and textures.

Top-end restaurants riding the crest of the Italian food craze include Rusticoni, a stylish and airy venue stationed in the sprawling Złote Tarasy shopping arcade; Balgera, a suave spot serving complex and compelling dishes, and San Lorenzo, a decidedly debonair establishment with a tight focus on aquatic specialities such as roasted gilthead in white wine, salt-baked sea bass and grilled salmon with steamed vegetables.

Taste of Europe

European gastronomic heavyweights like Greece, Spain, Portugal, Germany and Hungary all made their own defining presence in Warsaw, albeit less intensely than their Italian and French counterparts. The vegetable, cream and seafood-rich Greek cuisine is brought to Polish audiences by Zorba, a a sensibly outfitted outlet on the outskirts of the city, the serene and subdued Dionizos, and convivial Meltemi and Santorini, which operate under the enterprising Kręgliccy restaurant and catering group. To experience a little slice of Spain, culinary conquistadors can explore the casually-sophisticated Mirador, the tapas-centric Tapa y Toro restaurant in Złote Tarasy and Casa To Tu, a vibrant two-floor eatery specialising in bit-sized nibbles and boldly-layered paellas, among others.

The land of sausage, beer and yodelling young ladies (a.k.a Germany) is faithfully recreated at Adler, a mid-sized downtown restaurant decked with dark wooden furniture and a variety of bucolic trinkets (think ceramic vases and beer mugs, dried flowers and empty wine barrels). Food-wise, the oldies-but-goodies such as white Munich sausages with bavarian sweet mustard, Berlin-style sauteed veal liver with apples and onions and Wiener schnitzel with potato salad are the main source of delight here. Old-school classics and bustling platters of grilled meats are also the forte of Der Elefant, a city-centre stalwart since 1990, where patrons have the pleasure of digesting their meals under the watchful eyes of a big elephant head.

Embodying the taste-bud-tingling essence of the Balkans is Tawerna Tabaka, a year-old addition to city's restaurant circle. The kitchen churns out "exotic Ottoman cuisine", which is basically regional specialties of Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Macedonia, Montenegro, Serbia and Turkey, resulting in an over-reaching menu that requires some serious reading. Standout dishes include lamb chops pickled in yogurt and herbs, chopped mutton beef-balls on a dagger, layered with smoked bacon and red hot pepper and tuna steak in caper sauce. These exotic and delicious dishes fit in nicely with the eclectic but enchanting decor of layered terra-cotta walls, rustic wooden tables and chairs, Turkish rugs, lamps, water pipes and a cornucopia of candles.

 Heading East

For the game but greenhorn ethnic food scout, a good port of call is Russian cuisine. Traditional czarist fare, much like native Polish dishes, is earthy, simple and wholesome - providing ample nourishment during the bone-rattling chill of winter. Serving up the stuff of soothing Russian homeyness is Bistro Babooshka (translating as "grandmother"), a quaint inner-city eatery done up in friendly farmhouse fashion with sturdy wooden tables and wall panelling, rural kitchen utensils and a mish-mash of decorative objects. Its hearty specialties - from soul-warming vegetable soups to potato and meat-filled pielmieni (ravioli-type dumplings), pancakes and characteristic beef stroganoff - consistently provide a flavour bang of intensity.

Of all the ethnic foodways making inroads into Warsaw, those hailing from Central Asia have been particularly unknown to Polish diners, that is, until the recent launch of Mała Gruzja. Wonderfully warm and inviting with its bare-brick walls, folkloric tablecloths, ornaments and Caucasian music, this moderately-sized underground haven is the city's impressive introduction to national cuisine of Georgia. "Georgian kitchen is unusual but not frightening," says Paweł Czarnecki, the communications director of the restaurant and the son of the proprietor, Piotr Czarnecki. He birthed the concept of this lively ethnic enclave upon returning from a super-tasty trip to Georgia, where he met and later recruited the stellar talent of native chef Mindia Abashidze. To showcase the best of his homelands culinary culture, Abashidze created a menu filled with piquantly-seasoned grilled meats, vegetables and an assortment of Chinkali (boiled dumplings with various fillings) and Chaczapuri, a tangy stuffed flatbread. "Initially, the dishes proved to be to spicy and hot, so we tuned down the heat a bit, adjusting and changing the menu to the tastes of our Georgian and Polish clientele."

Kosher Corners

As subversive sentiments held toward tragic historical events laps into the past, Poland's once-thriving Jewish culture is slowly reawakening, bringing with it a new-found appreciation for foods of the Holy land. Menora, a long-time fixture in the city's Jewish epicentre, Grzybowski Square, is an unassuming retreat into world of babkas (a rich sweet yeast cake) and blintzes (thin pancake rolled around various fillings). Similarly lacklustre in aesthetics but much more dynamic in service and clientele is Pod Samsonem, a small-ish spot situated just outside Warsaw's Old Town barrier, which showcases an array of affordable Polish-Jewish options. The Glatt Kosher restaurant in the Jewish Business Centre offers healthy, preservative-free meals for those holding up a traditional glatt kosher lifestyle.

Curry Central

Western Europe has been high on the tour-de-force of Indian flavours for decades, but only in recent years has this fiery cuisine started to come into its own on Warsaw's eating arena. The first bona fide Indian hotspot, Tandoor Palace, opened its doors to indigenous-loving gourmands in 1998 near the hip-happening Zbawiciela Square. Founded and run by Charanjit Singh Walia, a Singaporean Indian Sikh, this spirited haunt delivers quality Indian eats, from sizzlers to shashliks, in addition to a wide range of Indonesian, Singaporean and Thai goodies. Following suit are other culinary ventures, including Arti, a one-room
neighbourhood-style outlet located on the traffic-heavy boulevard, the trendy but out-of-the-way Ganesh, sensual and boisterous Bollywood Lounge and the hole-in-the-wall Namaste India, which is part fast-food restaurant, part ethnic grocery stocking a massive selection of Indian items.

But the crown of Warsaw's curry kingdom belongs firmly to India Curry, a centrally located temple of fervent food owned and operated by an entrepreneurial husband-and-wife duo. With its collection of gold and wood folk artwork, simple wood furniture and a sizable see-through kitchen, there's a captivating homegrown vibe that imbues the service and the food which is absolutely faultless. The head chef, Rakesh Mohite, flexes his culinary muscles by subtly blending the six essential tastes of Indian cooking - spicy, sour, bitter, sweet, hot and lemon - into lip-smacking creations such as Thali, Mutton Rogan Ghost, Chicken Tikka Massala, Samosa and Palak Panner.

"When India Curry first launched in 2000, Indian cuisine was relatively less popular in Poland with the locals, who were reluctant to try a new cuisine or spend their valuable money dining with an unknown foods," explains Shaira Bojwani, the general manager of the restaurant. "Our clients back then mainly included the Brits , Americans, French and Germans who already had lots of curry, but over these past years the awareness of India has spread so vastly that it's giving more focus to Indian food which has been accepted by increasing number of Poles, and today, I would safely say that 80 percent of our clients are Polish."

Oriental Eats

The influence of mushrooming Vietnamese, Chinese and Japanese communities in Poland has also broadened Warsaw's culinary melting pot. The city's decade-long fixation on Asian cuisine, particularly Japanese food, has flooded the capital with fashion-forward sushi bars, tiny noodle joints and shamelessly flamboyant oriental outlets. Those whose pockets are feeling particularly deep can splash out on fresh and sumptuous sushi rolls and sashimi filets at Akashia, a bright and theatrically-furnished spot in Złote Tarasy, at the business-friendly Tomo Sushi or at the more somber and traditional Tokio, positioned near the Vistula River. For folks with an appetite for dim sum, Peking duck and pan-fried noodles, there's Bliss Garden, a low-key underground locale, and Canton, a down-to-earth place with a stereotypical dragon decor, as well as Red Orange, a pumpkin-hued place that cooks up familiar standbys and funky fusion meals.

"Poles have travelled all over the world, expanding their culinary horizons, so they are more and more interested in trying out new and exotic varieties of food," observes Anna Gawlikowska, the astute manager of Galeria Bali & Buddha Club, a restaurant-cum-club that thrives on the exotic. A visit to this popular downtown hotspot is an overwhelming assault on the senses, not just because of the fusion of complex textures, aromas and the zesty intricates of Indonesian and Thai delicacies, but because of the lavish premises, jam-packed with gold-tinted statues, paintings, vibrant textiles and chic wooden furniture. Everything, including all of the fancy furnishings, decor elements, floors and kitchen equipment, where imported by the restaurants' owner, the cultured globetrotter Witold Gawlikowski. The lengthy and well-though out menu - which include truly exotic dishes like crocodile steak, blue crab salad, Asian-style paella and lobster cooked with whiskey and other spirits - is a testament to the skills of head chef I Made Runatha and his three-man team of highly-skilled Indonesian chefs. "By using the freshest and highest quality ingredients imported directly from Asia and preparing them by top-shelf cooks we have set new standards for ethnic gastronomy in Warsaw."

Comments

No comments added