Friday, October 27, 2006
Crack whore is an insult. Hooker is a compliment.
Sock Monkeys!
Originally uploaded by mooshimooshisan.
Well, THAT was an experience! Our trip to the Polish club turned out to be somewhat how I would imagine a trip to the restaurant in purgatory would be.
I suppose it didn't help that we arrived later than anticipated due to horrendous traffic hampering Lee's dash home from work in the wilds of Bellshill. But when we did arrive, we stealthily negotiated the buzzer entry door (by tagging on to the back of another, clearly more seasoned party of visitors) and soon we were in the hallway of what seemed to be someone's gran's house.
A quick call to Mum's mobile confirmed we were in fact in the correct place and Andrew soon appeared from downstairs to escort us down to the basement where the bar and restaurant are.
The bar seemed very nice, quite cosy and with some authentic Poles scattered around drinking Polish drinks. We had time to order in the zubrowka and apple juices and then file through to the restaurant. The decor is reminiscent of a guesthouse in Torquay circa 1958, with little Hansel and Gretel style carved back chairs, but as the place only had one other table of diners (the ones we snuck in with), we thought we'd be fine for eating this side of midnight.
How wrong we were. Despite the other table only arriving 5 minutes before us, to cut a long, long story short, they had completely finished both starter and main course by the time we even had a sniff of our zupa. There was one very harrassed Polish lady in charge of cooking, waiting on tables, clearing plates, etc and she was clearly not expecting 12 hungry people to show up at 8pm.
In fact, it was just a shade off 2 HOURS from ordering to actually having some food in front of us, during which time my dad entertained us with his mildly drunken antics and his tales of how him and Aleks' dad Valdek are going to get on like a house on fire, despite the fact neither of them speak each other's language. It sounds like it would be a LONG 2 hours, but in actual fact, it wasn't too bad.
What was bad that after all that waiting, when the first round of soup arrived, it was cold. Not just a little bit less hot than you'd like, but actually cold. So Aleks had to take her and Lee's soup back to the kitchen and explain that it was stone cold - very handy that she could obviously say that in Polish.
That aside, the food was actually really nice. The soup I had was lovely, kind of chickeny broth with pasta and carrot. Lee's was some kind of broth with a sausage and half a hard boiled egg in it (which caused my father to almost fall off his chair when I asked Lee how his sausage was) and there was the ubiquitous beetroot soup (borscht) with croquette (which is a bit like a findus crispy pancake with mushrooms in it).
Our main courses arrived surprisingly quickly after that and were hot (or at least the bits that were supposed to be hot were), much to everyone's relief (bearing in mind it was after 10pm by this point). I think Aleks was pretty embarrassed for her fellow countrywoman's poor showing, but really I think the woman was just overwhelmed by it all, especially just being by herself. We were joking about seeing her with her coat on, walking out the door, but after last night, she may well decide to do that!
Main courses were plentiful - I had goulash with potato pancake and salad which was lovely. The potato pancake was a little like a giant potato rosti and omlette like - ie folded over half moon shape with goulash inside. Lee had pierogi, which is little half moon shaped dumplings with meat inside (very reminiscent of San Francisco's pot stickers - mmmmm!) and Dad had some pork cutlet-y thing, and it was pronounced a good choice by all (except Mum possibly who couldn't get round the fact that there was gravy and cold salad on the same plate).
Thankfully, we had been forewarned that the desserts were all sold out (at 90 pence for cheesecake, I'm not surprised!), so we paid up (only £35 for a 2 course meal for 6 people!) and got back out into the cold and headed home. The food was lovely but the service really was farcical. I think Aleks is going to go back at a weekend to see if it's any better, and if it's not possibly defect to being Ukranian or something! ;)
Sadly, I didn't get to take any photos of the evening, such was our bewildered state, but I did get some photos of our family, relaxing at home!
posted by Claire @ 10/27/2006 10:47:00 am |
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