Fine Dining In Kracow

[ravelda]

Hi all,

I am calling to you all for some help - albeit rather late in the day, but I am off to Krakow on Thursday with my wife for our wedding anniversary and so far we have failed to highlight anything that might even begin to resemble fine dining restaurants in and around the city. Whilst we will be throwing ourselves into the Pierogi's and so on in the milk bars and other Polish joints around the city, we would like something a little more refined for our actual anniversary night and so far have only managed to locate restaurants which to all intents and purposes have the same menu, starting with appetisers the inevitably include a Carpaccio, then soups, pasta, meats (including that 1980's wonder of steak au poivre), fish, vegetarian dishes and deserts. Can anyone help me?!!

[David A. Goldfarb]

If you haven't been to Wierzynek, it's one of Poland's main culinary attractions for traditional fine Polish cuisine in a historic Renaissance setting on the Rynek Główny. If you can't get a reservation, you might at least go to the mead cellar on another evening.

Hawełka is another fine old establishment on the Rynek, dating to the nineteenth century. I believe the menu is the same or similar at their upstairs room called Restauracja Tetmejerowska, decorated with modernist paintings by Włodzimierz Przerwa Tetmajer. I've eaten at both, and both are very elegant establishments, but I haven't compared menus. You can find them on the internet.

[ravelda]

If you haven't been to Wierzynek, it's one of Poland's main culinary attractions for traditional fine Polish cuisine in a historic Renaissance setting on the Rynek Główny.  If you can't get a reservation, you might at least go to the mead cellar on another evening.

Hawełka is another fine old establishment on the Rynek, dating to the nineteenth century.  I believe the menu is the same or similar at their upstairs room called Restauracja Tetmejerowska, decorated with modernist paintings by Włodzimierz Przerwa Tetmajer.  I've eaten at both, and both are very elegant establishments, but I haven't compared menus.  You can find them on the internet.

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Thanks for this David, I will add that to my list - it's amazing how difficult it can be finding the real gastronomic delights in places where gastronomy is perhaps more hidden below the surface than in cities like London or Paris. Most of the review sites such as trip advisor have recommendations, but they are ususally from people who are not really no epicurians!

[rjs1]

If you haven't been to Wierzynek, it's one of Poland's main culinary attractions for traditional fine Polish cuisine in a historic Renaissance setting on the Rynek Główny.

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It has had slightly mixecd reviews recently, though.

[ravelda]

If you haven't been to Wierzynek, it's one of Poland's main culinary attractions for traditional fine Polish cuisine in a historic Renaissance setting on the Rynek Główny.

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It has had slightly mixecd reviews recently, though.

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Since this seems to be the one everyone is recommending above others, I think I will take a punt on it! I will write back with a review when I get back (my first in a long time!).

Any other culinary delights I need to look out for?

[rjs1]

ny other culinary delights I need to look out for?

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Cabbage.

[David A. Goldfarb]

Less formal, I like a place called "Chłopskie jadło" ("peasant food"), which has become something of a chain of casual restaurants serving traditional Polish cuisine, but what I've had there is usually good. I recommend the bigos served in a bread bowl.

Ask about the guy who grills kiełbasa under the bridge in the evenings. I haven't had it yet myself, but it's something everyone raves about. It's a place to go, say, after a night out at a club.

Edited August 18, 2009 by David A. Goldfarb (log)

[ravelda]

Less formal, I like a place called "Chłopskie jadło" ("peasant food"), which has become something of a chain of casual restaurants serving tradition Polish cuisine, but what I've had there is usually good.  I recommend the bigos served in a bread bowl.

Ask about the guy who grills kiełbasa under the bridge in the evenings.  I haven't had it yet myself, but it's something everyone raves about.  It's a place to go, say, after a night out at a club.

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Thanks for that David - very helpful - it is a cuisine that I have eaten plenty of having had Polish grand parents, but that sadly I have never known what the actual names for most of the dishes are so it is all alien to me!

[David A. Goldfarb]

Another very elegant place that I hadn't thought of before is Amadeus--

http://www.restauracja-amadeus.pl/index.php?p0=1

I attended a reception there a few years ago, and the food was very good, but I don't know that the catering menu is the same as the regular restaurant menu.

As I recall, they served particularly good szmalec, which is kind of a Polish version of rillettes--one of those dishes that I don't think I ever encountered when I visited Poland in the last years of Communism, but which seems to be everywhere in recent years.

Regarding mixed reviews at Wierzynek--that wouldn't surprise me. They've got their own dynamic, and they don't seem too interested in contemporary international culinary trends. I haven't been in a few years, but I remember once in 1989 (the last year of the Communist regime) I'd ordered the trout in aspic, and the waiter asked if I wanted the "sos Tatrzański," and in the general confusion of speaking a foreign language that I didn't know particularly well at the time, I was expecting some exotic "Tatar sauce," and of course it was just ordinary tartar sauce with mayonnaise and pickle relish.