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Restaurant Review: Café Polonez

CAFÉ POLONEZ

195 Roncesvalles Avenue ~ cafepolonez.ca Instagram: @cafepolonez ~ Twitter: @CafePolonez Co-Diner: Tim Golem

Around since 1981, Café Polonez has long been considered the hub for Polish cuisine in Toronto. They're located in the heart of the city’s Polish community, Roncesvalles, so they should definitely know their way around a pierogi. Featured on season one of You Gotta Eat Here! and named #1 Best Cabbage Rolls by blogTO, this half-Polack had to give them a try. (Full disclosure: Despite being half Polish and a 2nd generation Canadian, the closest I've come to authentic Polish exposure was listening to my grandparents speak the language and eating my grandmother's cooking a couple of times a year as I grew up. She passed away in 1997. Suffice to say, I'm not exactly a reliable resource on Polish anything. But I did have a real Polish babcia.) I visited the restaurant on a Saturday evening and the place was packed. Luckily we were able to be seated right away, but just barely. I would recommend making a reservation and not leaving it to chance like I did. The room isn't massive by any means but they do seem to maximize their space with plenty of tables. I loved the gold colour scheme, sepia tones, and the large depiction of old-timey Warsaw on the back wall. I also really liked the beautifully framed artwork of the gryf and eagle on another wall. The decor is simple and tasteful. Many people around us were speaking fluent Polish. A basket of rye bread and butter was left on our table - perfect. The first thing that I did was scour the beverage list for something authentic. I love that they offer a nice list of Polish beers and of course a respectable selection of Polish vodka. However, I went straight to the Homemade Kompot ($3.50) which seemed like the absolute right thing to do.

Kompot is a non-alcoholic sweet beverage made by boiling fruit in water. So it's essentially a tea made with fruit. This one had large pieces of pear in it and was served room-temperature. It tasted like Christmas and was sweet and delicious. The fully-saturated pear slices were nice to bite into. This was the correct thing to drink by far! When most people think about Polish food I'm sure that their minds go directly to pierogi, cabbage rolls and kielbasa. But for me, the one thing that I really, really wanted to eat was Barszcz Czerwony z Uszkami ($7.95). I was so pleased to find it on the menu!

Borscht consomme with choice of mushroom or meat dumpling.

This beet root soup with dumplings is one of the main things that I long for and miss that my grandmother used to make. I've never been able to find it anywhere. Traditionally served on Christmas (that's when we used to have it) the uszka or dumplings are key. Our friendly server suggested that we could order a mix of both mushroom and meat dumplings, so that's exactly what we did. The soup itself was fairly light but full of beet and dill flavour. The dumplings were wonderfully tender but held up to the liquid well. I liked both dumpling flavours a lot, both savoury and delicious, but I think that I preferred the mushrooms ones a little bit more. This soup was pure nostalgia for me and I really enjoyed it. I'm also pretty excited about the rest of their soups too - of which there are six to choose from. Each made in-house daily with fresh ingredients, they've got Chlodnik (cold borscht), Flaczki (beef tripe soup) and Żurek z Kiełbasą i Jajkiem (white borscht), among the rest. I would love to try them all! Next I had to try the Gołąbki ($17.95) especially if they are supposed to be the best in town.

Stuffed with rice and pork, topped with tomato sauce and served with potatoes and a bouquet of salads.

Cabbage rolls with minced pork filling was another of my grandmother's staple items. Café Polonez also makes them with mushroom filling and it's nice to see that there are options. I have to say, these were the best cabbage rolls that I've ever experienced outside of my grandmother's cooking. They tasted so much like her's (at least from what I can remember). Each roll was wrapped just right with a perfect savoury mix of meat and rice inside. I loved the zippy tomato sauce and how ideally the acidity balanced out each roll. The "bouquet of salads" was also surprisingly good and I was especially impressed with the ćwikła, which combines grated beets and horseradish. It just tasted so right to me. The mashed carrots, coleslaw, and potatoes were good too. I certainly couldn't visit this restaurant without trying the Pierogi ($7.25 for 6), of course another dish that my grandmother used to make.

Homemade boiled dumplings served with side of sour cream and fried onions & pork.

They have five different filling options available but only one was "correct" as far as I'm concerned: the Kapustą i Grzyby. Sauerkraut and mushroom. Cheddar pierogi are a complete sham in my opinion, although they do serve them. Again, these were almost exactly as I had remembered them. Each perfect pouch had a thin and uniform dough encasing a burst of flavourful, tangy sauerkraut and earthy mushrooms. They were everything that I had hoped that they would be. The only thing that seemed missing to me was to serve them with a mushroom gravy, which is what my grandmother used to do. One other dish that I simply couldn't pass by was the Śledzie ($10.95).

Topped with sour cream and onion garnish and a bouquet of salads.

Herring. Pickled herring. As soon as I saw this plate I was filled with happiness because it's kinda everything that I love. I was extra excited to see the pickle and the hard boiled egg. The herring itself was wrapped around a sour cream and onion mixture and was very obviously house-pickled. This fish is not for the faint of heart. It's intense!! It's salty and fishy (two of my favourite flavours) and this version certainly didn't hold any of that back. We ordered the appetizer size however they also serve it as a main (which even I think might be too much!). I was way too full for dessert but wished that I could have tried the owoce pierogi. These are fruit-filled pierogi and I'm not sure if I've ever tried anything like it before. Café Polonez filled me with incredible amounts of happy nostalgia. This was the first time since my grandmother's passing 23 years ago that I tasted food that actually reminded me of her's. I almost felt relieved to learn that this food exists somewhere. This is Polish food. And as far as I'm concerned it's the real thing.

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