Gut feeling
By : Celia Barnes
Mehana Gradinaul. Mikolajsak 2Tel. 863-3628
Hours:
Noon - last customerCredit cards and reservations accepted
You must go to Mehana Gradina," said a colleague of mine. In fact, she said this to me so many times, the name had become like a mantra.
So finally, after meditating on this for a number of months, I called my friend Natalie and said let's head way out west. The enticement? A Bulgarian restaurant, which I was told is as cheap as chips with food that will keep you coming back for more.
For the geographically challenged like me, Bulgaria has always been one of those places that is "somewhere over there." A kind of European equivalent of the tiny African nation of Burkina Faso: Everyone's heard of it; but where the hell is it exactly?
For all I knew, roasted swan and barbecued blood sausage were the national dishes, and cheese rolling and badminton the most popular sports. To be honest, the only Bulgarian fact I could quote with any confidence was that Poland consumes a lot of cheap Bulgarian wine.
And what's more, now that I've dined at Mehana Gradina, my cultural fog has failed to lift and I'm still fumbling around trying to get a handle on the cuisine of this Balkan nation, which I now know lists Greece, Turkey and Serbia as some of its neighbors.
Being a Monday night, I didn't think it would be necessary to book a table and when our taxi dropped us outside a brick edifice, not far behind the Castorama store on Aleje Jerozolimskie, the place was deserted. Except for a couple deep in conversation in a far corner, we were the only guests there.
Mehana Gradina means "in the garden" but I didn't know that at the time, otherwise we would have dined in the restaurant's supposedly beautiful courtyard. Instead, we sat inside, amid typically folksy surroundings: terra cotta jugs hanging from the walls; a decorative lattice and a forest of indoor plants.
From this point on, things started to get very strange. The menu was in Polish and Bulgarian, which, just to be difficult, uses the Cyrillic alphabet. I could pick out certain words in Polish chicken, potatoes, beans but the rest, to both Natalie and me, was as mysterious as Bulgaria's nebulous political system. I resorted to pointing at things and asking the waiter: "Dobrze?" He appeared patient, if a little testy, and he would nod or shake his head accordingly.
Using this method of food selection, we ordered two scrumptious starters: some grape leaves filled with spiced meat and served with a rich yogurt sauce and Biurek a traditional Bulgarian dish of red peppers stuffed with a smooth ricotta and a fresh-herb filling, then breaded and fried. These two plates made the trip to Mehana Gradina well worth it.
For a main course, the waiter suggested the chicken shish kebab for me which is a pretty safe choice. The grilled skewers of meat came with a garlic-flavored bean salad, chips and coleslaw.
Natalie's attempt at ordering didn't go so well. "I have no idea what it was that I just ordered, but I only hope it wasn't tripe," she said. She needn't have worried: It was something worse than tripe.
She selected the Rolowan batak that we know now is a thin chicken filet topped with bacon and cheese, and wrapped in a gut. It looked like some sort of a blistered alien prop from an episode of "Dr. Who." But Natalie assured me, once she pushed away the outer layer of bubbling fat, what was hiding underneath was tasty.
If we could speak Polish, I'm sure we would have enjoyed our meal much more because our translator tells me there is also veal sirloin, a number of minced-veal cutlets, breaded grilled steak and homemade kielbasa on the menu. There are lots of soups, great desserts, and healthy salads, but, sadly, only a small selection of Bulgarian wines to go with it.
Endeavoring to console myself after such a disaster, I did what any self-respecting restaurant reviewer would do: Find another place to eat. With young Robert and Mariusz in tow, we three called in for a fleeting lunchtime visit to U Hopfera (../common/article.asp?id=121390&site=2).
Dinner for two, including drinks, at Mehana Gradina, came to zl. 99 ($25).
On the menu:
Stuffed pepper starter (Biurek) zl.9.50
Stuffed grape leaves (Golabki z lisci winogron) zl.7
Crepes with spinach and sheep's cheese (Nalesnik "Gradina") zl.13
Breaded brain (Mózdzek panierowany) zl.11
Chicken shish kebab (Szaszlyki z kurczaka) zl.15
Natalie's mystery chicken (Rolowan batak) zl.15
Minced veal cutlet with cheese, bacon & hot peppers (Gurmanska pleskawica) zl. 11
