Apetyt Architektow down but not out on Koszykowa
Happiness writes white; it doesn't show up on the page.
Motherlant*
Which is just my pretentious, "yeah I was an English major, wanna make something of it" way of saying that it's difficult to find much to write about Apetyt Architektow (Architects' Appetite, although it really should've been called In the Belly of the Architect) because it was mostly so ... good. Not multi-orgasmic, but competently executed, unfussy, aesthetically pleasing, and tasty (wish I could say that about all the boys). This recently renovated basement eatery, which gets its name from being in the same building as the Warsaw Polytechnic's architectural department, is clearly no longer the same place where someone was once (allegedly) stabbed to death.
Nevertheless, Apetyt Architektow has one killer of a design flaw:
The wine. As in semi-sweet is all they stock, in both the red and the white. The luckless bystander who took the first sip described it as watered down, third-rate sherry the kind your well-meaning elderly relatives serve on those interminable post-church Sunday afternoons. Given that the wine is listed as simply red and white, and as being served in carafes, we knew we weren't going to be blown away. We'd just reconciled ourselves to something vaguely quaffable in the cheap valpolicella mold.
If you can instead manage to drown your sorrows with bottled imports or domestic beer on tap, here are some of the things you can look forward to in the belly of the architect:
Cocktail list: Somewhat limited. No top-of-the-line single malts, but they managed to make a pretty decent Gordon's martini, and were the first place that actually put in extra olives off the bat when requested.
Food: Simple, flavorful and beautiful to look at. Especially suited to people like me who can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and thus resent being subjected to a highly experimental seasoning bonanza. The unsatisfied bystander was the one who ordered the farfalle with spinach, pronouncing it bland and way too huge a portion (we're talking Alice-in-Wonderland proportions, here). The rest of us developed an all-Canadian crush on our dishes, especially the spicy seafood soup, which was filled with salmon, mussels, shrimp and octopus; the crisp, not too oily and gargantuan potato pancakes; and the perfectly grilled, subtly seasoned chicken breast with grilled peppers and zucchini.
Service: Sweet, patient, and unerring. And trust me, we gave our waitress something to be patient about, between: (a) asking for details about practically every dish (the descriptions are as sparse as the decor), (b) inquiring, in essence, whether pork came from pigs, because the lone native-sounding Polish speaker (me) is shaky on meat vocabulary, (c) sending back the wine and (d) dividing a dinner for five into two bills, one of which was a faktura VAT. And if our waitress was a trifle colorless, I find that preferable to the incompetent overemoting that passes for service at the hands of Szpilka's wannabe CK One models.
Prices: Reasonable.
Atmosphere: Hip monastic or Graeco-Roman catacomb, depending on how much access you think monks had to Jocasta Innes' "Paint Magic." Soothing but not soporific, the light grays and yellows made me feel I was somewhere in the Mediterranean without resorting to a candle in a wine bottle. The dimly lit private room we occupied filtered out most of what sounded like the "Gladiator" soundtrack, which was perfect for the non-threatening catacombey vibe.
When to go: Winter afternoons and evenings, when it won't really matter that there are no windows.
Coming back?: Yes. And so should you.
*I think.
