Some time ago, we went to a Polish restaurant in a place called Great Bridge, near West Bromwich.
We have never eaten Polish food, and I got curious when I read good reviews about this newly opened restaurant. As I have written in the past, a lot of new immigrants are coming from Poland and my impression is that this restraunt is mainly targeted on them.
Looking from outside, it is not promising. Besides, it is very difficult to find, as it does not face directly on the street.
Inside, however, it is another world: it is cosy and elegant. Only distraction is the large flat screens on the wall with Polish MTV style programme on.
Guests were mainly Polish, but the menu is in bilingual and the waiting staff (well, I guess these are the people who have the restaurant) speak good enough English.
Dim and I ordered 2 starters, 2 mains, 1 side, and 1 bottle of beer. This is the first dish: ravioli in beetroot soup. The interest thing is that we can read on the menu, as to main dishes, how many grammes of food are to be served. I have heard that in some East European coutries (and maybe in Germany?), the restaurants have to indicate on the menu how many grammes of meat they mean to serve. There must be a similar rule in Poland.
The soup was sour and had a smoky flavour. Ravioli in themselves were not big deal, but they went well with the soup. Dim does not usually like soup, but when I gave him the bowl to test it, he finished it without leaving me anything!
D’s starter was marinated herring with cream.
One fillet of raw salted herring, and raw onion slices mixed with heavy sour cream. I love raw blue fish and I have bought and enjoyed several times Polish fish marinated in oil or vinegar, but this one was far too salty. We were also served several slices of Polish bread, but they disappeared to finish this salty fish.
These are the main dishes. Mine was a potato pancake in a Hungarian style and Dim's was bigos (mixed meat with sauerkraut). They were both presented beautifully. Potato pancake was green, and folded in the middle to wrap meat (I think it was chicken) stew with paprika pepper pieces. On top of it there were tomato sauce and white cream. I did not like it so much, as the meat was cooked too long, resulting in the consistency of meat served in airplane, and most of all, it was too salty.
Bigos was various bits of sausages and hams cooked with sauerkraut, that came with chips that we asked as side dish (included in the price of main dish). It was, again, too salty.
The “mixed salad” was not what I imagined, but basically 4 types of picked vegetables. Although I love picked vegetable, on that occasion I would have preferred raw veggie to neutralize heavily salted main dishes.
The price for all these, with 1 bottle of beer came ca. £18. So it was very good value for two two-course meals. But I could not enjoy because of excessive quantity of salt. It is a pity that I cannot return.
If you are interested, here is their address and phone number.
http://www.birminghamplus.com/items/items.asp?iid=2506
