Pierogilishous

Last weekend, James and I went to Warsaw!

Since my first meal of the day before our flight had been kind of a disaster despite my carefully transporting my granola and yogurt from The Kitchen to LHR, and I had no desire to eat BA's chicken sandwich, I was pretty hungry by the time we were getting ready to head to the ballet -- and dinner wasn't until 10pm afterwards! But this beef carpaccio, sundried tomatoes and parmesan starter at the +One bar at the Intercontinental definitely tided me over (The Caribbean cocktail, however, was not delicious). The meat was paper-thin and melt-in-your-mouth and the combination with the tomatoes and parm was really yums!

We booked our two nights' dinners based on the TripAdvisor rankings for Polish food in Warsaw. Friday night, was the #3 spot, Dom Polski. We had booked din for 10pm since we knew the ballet would end a bit late, but since we arrived so late, the vibe wasn't great. The restaurant was kind of emptying out. We had pierogi starters and James had a pork tenderloin main, while I had guinea fowl. I didn't really love mine, but I think it might be because I now know that I don't love guinea fowl...I did really enjoy the meat pierogis though.

 The next day, we had breakfast at our hotel, followed later in the day by a bit of mulled wine at the ice rink/it's-still-Christmas-in-the-Warsaw-Old-Town-Square part of town and then lunch at Podwale
:

appetizers of litre-beers and pickles&sauerkraut...what more do you want!? James had a duck main and I had a potato pancake with beef tenderloin and mushroom sauce, which I actually really liked, though I was unsure about the potato pancake, but wanted to try it. But the portions at this restaurant were ginormous. So I most definitely didn't finish.

Dinner later that night was at Restauracja Polski Rozana, the 2nd restaurant we chose because of TripAdvisor. I'm really glad we did. James was still full from his gargantuan lunch, but I went ahead and had a 3-course meal :D

Chicken broth with dumplings; catfish on a bed of spinach; deer saddle with gnocchi; orange and almond meringue cake; tiny Chopin (obviously) vodka digestifs

Our last meal was a late lunch on Sunday. Thanks to foursquare, we stopped at Folk Gospoda. I wanted pierogis again, but felt too unadventurous to order them, so ordered some grilled game sausages (kielbasa?) instead - delicious. My pork knuckle main, however, ... how come no one ever told me that the knuckle of the pig tastes like ham and not tenderloin??? Blechhhh. I had maybe 5 bites. The fatty part was much tastier, but it grossed me out too much, so I just stopped. It was sad times, but alas. Adventurers have to be ready for disappointment sometimes.

But since the sausages were pretty filling, I did okay until flight time - which is when I was planning to eat my Rozana leftovers anyway. So thanks to an actually appetizing (and good - except for the rocket, which I hate) tomato mozzarella salad on BA:

which served as my starter, I enjoyed another 3 course dinner while flying back across the European continent. Of course, it would have been better fresh and warm, but even cold, I was still obsessed with my catfish, etc and the orange almond meringue. Fantastic foodend to the weekend!