This restaurant had been recommended in the restaurant we had gone to at lunchtime and as we walked past it by chance later in the afternoon we made a reservation because it looked lovely. So far so good. We arrived as planned, were shown to our seats by the window and discovered we had no room to move, let alone eat. So we changed tables and asked for the wine list. We chose the wine - off the menu. We chose another one. We were persuaded to taste a similar Polish one. Well, no similarity at all, actually. We ordered the Gewurtztraminer and it arrived. Warm. We asked for it to be cooled. It was. A bit. Then she poured. It was still lukewarm. ??? We were told it had to be like that. The first case of we know best. Then our starters arrived. A beautiful hydrangea flower arrived. Stunning to look at. Made of kohlrabi and apple. A sauce came with it. Inside the depths were bits of walnut and apple. All utterly tasteless, unfortunately. Fresh and textureful. But tasteless. No salt and pepper to be seen. At least in a previous restaurant they came round with the salt and pepper but were delighted when we waved them away with cries of unnecessary. Here we wouldn’t have been so high handed.
Anyway. I ate it, hoping for more luck with our main course. Meanwhile I noticed that my husband's sea trout with various roes wasn’t going down too well. It looked very pretty, like a smarties covered cookie, but quite strange. He had asked whether it was very spicy. He hadn’t thought to ask if it was going to be steeped in vinegar and there was nothing in the menu to suggest it. So he left half of it. The waitress asked why and when he mentioned the sourness she said well, it’s meant to be escaveche style. So why didn’t you say in the first place? we thought.
And now for the pierogi. It’s hard to make pierogi look nice, or special, but not that hard to make them taste delicious. For people who adopt the new trend of beige food, our plates must have looked great. Ten little white ears sprinkled with white blobettes of potato mousse. Dull but the anticipation of flavour kept us going
So we began to eat. The dough was cold at the edges - how does that work? and the stuffing- supposedly sheep’s cheese, was just hard boiled and peppery. Flavourless. We ate them because we were hungry and left as soon as we could.
What a disappointment.
One redeeming feature: when the bill came they had taken off the sea trout. But we will never return.
We went because we were told they are in the running for a Michelin star. More like a Michelin Tyre!