Jazz eatery offers varied menu in a confused aesthetic
With all of the cafes spilling out onto the pavement these days, it's a real treat to discover that at least one cluster of beer umbrellas taking up space on Warsaw's streets belongs to a jazz cafe.
Oooo, a jazz cafe. Sounds cool. And Nowe Miasto's new Jazz Cafe Helicon is pretty darn hip if the dress code of its patrons most of whom were wearing almost as much black last Saturday night as Kirk Douglas in "The Last Sunset" is any kind of gauge.
Funereal attire aside, Jazz Cafe Helicon also sounds like it should: traditional jazzy and bluesy. CDs and bulky old LPs stand in racks off to one side, just ripe for the buying after you've two-tapped your way through a couple of beers. Zosia told me there's been a music store on the premises as long as she can remember. That would explain the Mama Cass Eliot solo record a thought I kept to myself.
But while things sounded like they should, appearances were a bit deceiving. The lighting seemed far too bright for a place dubbed a "jazz cafe." Then again, it wasn't calling itself jazz pub, club, or joint. It was only a cafe, and yes, black and white checkered tile floors and obnoxious green and red neon signs were standard decor in cafes of the past ... or were those soda fountains?
Things started looking jazzier by the time Zosia and I pulled up a couple of stools to a counter along a wall. Above us hung a row of black and white session photos and behind glass to my left, appropriately enough given this country's document fetishism, Miles Davis' last passport snapshot. Oh yeah, now we were in a Polish jazz joint.
So what kind of grub would this place serve up? White-bread sandwiches and a pitcher of gin? Surprisingly, a variety of dishes with names and ingredients from all over the globe. Our friendly waitress approached us several times before Zosia passed on the trendy Buena Vista salad and ordered the La Fiesta (zl. 14) while I had the Helicon (zl. 18), the most expensive salad on the Polish-only menu. As it turned out, the only differences between our choices, which contained Chinese cabbage, tomatoes, cucumbers, and hardboiled quail's eggs, were the sliced strips of roast venison on my salad and the walnuts and blue cheese on Zosia's. The dressings were also the same honey with poppy seeds. However, according to the menu, my salad was supposed to come laced with a honey dressing made from mead. Too bad, I was looking forward to imbibing some booze with my game. That aside, the salads weren't bad. The ingredients were fresh and quail's eggs were, well, cute.
While sipping a Tyskie tap beer (zl. 6), my barszcz z koldunami arrived. Before I could even bring a spoonful of the red liquid to my lips I detected the garlic. Lots of it. I would be soon in heaven, I thought to myself, not caring that my dinner date wouldn't be. A spoonful later and I could hardly utter the word "pysznie." I've never had a bowl of barszcz that garlicky, that good.
"It's not sour enough and as much as I like garlic, it's too much," Zosia countered. Traditionalist.
For mains, I again went to the high end of the menu (zl. 45) and ordered the venison fricassee with cranberry and forest mushroom sauce accompanied by kluski slaskie (dumplings) and steamed veggies. Aside from the dumpling lumps, which had about as much flavor as unsalted Cream of Wheat, this dish was a palate-pleaser. The venison wasn't as tough as I expected to find in such an unlikely venue and the sweet cranberry and forest 'shroom sauce complemented everything well. The lightly pan-fried zucchini, carrots, cauliflower, and broccoli were still crunchy and smartly seasoned with butter and herbs. I had made a pretty good choice.
Zosia was nearly as satisfied with her duck with plum sauce, fried potatoes and vegetables (zl. 29). Her bird was tender and meaty and the fruity plum sauce/gravy rich and full flavored. But it was too much for her to finish.
I still had room, though. And the lody z pieca (zl. 13), ice cream from the oven, sounded interesting. Would this be a Mexican-style fried ice cream, I wondered? Not even close. What I saw our waitress hauling out from the kitchen and laboring to bring over to our table surely must have been for the table of teenagers sitting next to us. I was wrong. Beneath a softball-sized cloud of oven-baked white meringue and atop a hollowed-out half pineapple with the top still on sat a couple of cool scoops of strawberry and vanilla ice cream. Simply glorious. Sniff!
Overall, Jazz Cafe Helicon suffers from a small personality disorder. It's more than a cafe but not quite a restaurant, although the menu may convince you otherwise. The service is good too, but don't expect them to cough up a faktura VAT on the spot. Our bill came to zl. 145 ($33) without tip.
