Deep and easy

VILLA NOVAUl. Kostki Potockiego 23Tel: 0601-440-200Hours: Noon-last guest

Recently opened Villa Nova offers wonderful food in an elegant setting. Under the same management as Gdańsk's Villa Hestia, the new restaurant is a stately mansion settled in Wilanów for about two months now, and it's quickly made itself a destination in southern Warsaw.

Spruced up for the holidays with Christmas trees and lights, the restaurant still manages to be gracefully understated. And despite the immense size of the place, no single room is overwhelmingly big. When our dining party arrived, we were the only group in a second floor room. It was so understated that only one other table was set up - all the way across the room at that. Perhaps we were somewhat separated from the main dining area because some VIPs had taken over the first floor. We were told the guest of honor's name was a state secret, but sources pointed to the daughter of a U.S. official who is often kept in a "secure and undisclosed" location.

In our seclusion a floor above the hush-hush diplomatic hubbub, we noticed an unassuming dining area with off-white colors and pleasant lighting. Our private room blossomed as the competent waiting staff quietly set up several more tables and other diners lent to the ambience. The restaurant's employees deserve special recognition - they were incredibly efficient but appropriately unobtrusive. They were present when we needed them, speaking English and Polish and keeping wine glasses filled, but invisible as we chatted.

But, as with any restaurant, the food is the issue. A quick look down the menu indicated a solid if unsurprising range of appetizers and soups, as well as fish and meat dishes. Villa Nova tends toward reinterpretations of good Polish dishes, updating them with some slightly different twists. But there are some clearly un-Polish choices as well and while not huge, the menu offers good variety. My dining companions and I - going by undercover noms de guerre even though we have rarely been secure or undisclosed - sampled thoroughly.

For starters, Deep Throat and Easy Rider went with soups. Deep Throat had trouble describing his cream of white truffles, a whitish soup made with the title track ingredients. Easy Rider talked fondly of his forest mushroom soup. "It's not about the mushrooms, it's about the broth," he said, comparing it positively with Poland's best. The thin soup had a powerfully good broth rich with full mushroom flavor, some pieces of mushroom and noodles. I, going by the stealthy name "Jeff," opted for grilled shrimp with couscous. The six shrimp - three each on a wooden skewer - were perfectly cooked and unadorned with anything but their own perfect flavor.

For our next selections, Deep Throat went to the salads menu, opting for the lobster salad with mozzarella, tomato and cucumber. The vegetables were set up like a little striped drum and medallions of lobster fanned out across the plate. It was, he said, "not earth shattering." Easy's roasted salmon elicited a string of compliments, including meaty, dense, succulent and firm. And my slices of duck breast were well cooked, thinly (but not too thinly) sliced and flavorful. Unfortunately, the lentils underneath were done up like refried beans with a mushy texture and an unappetizing color. Still, with a nice raspberry sauce, the flavor ruled the senses.

At this point, the meal proved to be outstanding and quite filling. The two bottles of Chilean Chardonnay (zł. 125 each) we polished off along the way lent a certain enthusiasm to the evening, however, so we decided to forge ahead to the dessert menu. (The wine menu offers selections from several countries and a range of prices that go from surprisingly reasonable to incredibly expensive.) The Throat's plums wrapped in a crepe-like pancake appeared to be the culinary highlight of his evening, with just the right level of sweetness to accompany a double espresso. Easy chose a dessert apparently named for a 1970s funk band, cake with chocolate soul. The small cake sat delicately off to the side of the plate but offered outsize chocolate flavor. And the house cake, an apple pie concoction, was heavy but very good. Again, not too sweet, not too bland. Our bill came to zł. 739 ($180) not including tip.

On the menu:

Cream of white truffles zł. 28

Boletus mushroom soup with dumplings zł. 28

Grilled scampies with couscous zł. 42

Lobster salad with mozzarella, tomato and cucumber zł. 135

Slices of duck breast with

lentils and raspberry zł. 65

Roasted salmon with dactari sauce zł. 63

House cake zł. 18

Cake with chocolate soul zł. 25

Jeff Sparshott