Menu needs more imagination, but service flashy as interior
We came back on a Monday night, when there was sure to be no problem getting a table. The restaurant is located in the Kaskada building, just past the Holiday Inn. A little alley connects to the Akwarium jazz club and its cool outside beer garden. Normally, I would have veered in that direction for a pre-dinner drink, but on this occasion I kept strictly on the dinner route as I felt a little under the weather.
The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived at 8 p.m. A bow-tied young waiter met us and offered a choice of two tables. We took the one by the entrance to the second dining room. It was only after an embarrassingly long interval of perhaps 10 minutes that I realized that the "entrance" was actually a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and the restaurant was only half as big as I'd thought.
The 7th Heaven was reportedly decorated by the same gentleman who designed the popular and trendy spots Barbados, Zanzibar and Rabarbar. It is flashy, with walls and floors of polished black granite, silver mirrors, a reflective steel ceiling and three mahogany-colored columns topped by golden lamps. "It looks like a night club," Chloe said. "Yeah, the kind where expensive hookers hang out," I added. It was just a tad too glitzy for our tastes, but if it's anything like the designer's other three restaurants, then plenty of Warsaw's "beautiful people" will likely disagree with me.
Our waiter brought menus with no delay. I was afraid that the prices were going to be as "flashy" as the interior, but was happily proved wrong. The starters all run zl. 10-zl. 20, while mains are zl. 20-zl. 35. In fact, the menu seemed to belong in a different restaurant. It was quite standard, traditional fare: lots of chicken, pork, run-of-the-mill salads, steak and salmon. Not the kind of exciting taste experiment the place's snazzy interior had led me to expect.
A word to the waiter brought the wine list. A nice selection of French, Italian, Spanish and Chilean, with almost everything between zl. 40 and zl. 70. I chose a Cote du Rhone '96 (zl. 48), and the well-trained waiter unobtrusively kept our glasses full throughout the meal.
Chloe started with a cheese platter (zl. 12.50). A nice selection of imported cheeses, including camembert, two kinds of brie, a strong and a mellow, a Danish bleu and a gouda, with several slices of each arranged on a wooden platter. I almost never order salads, but the chicken liver salad (zl. 13) caught my eye. Homerun! Lots of tender, moist pieces of chicken liver, straight off the grill, crumbled on top of a bed of lettuce, diced red peppers sprinkled with fresh garlic slices and bacon. Everything was washed with a sweet vinaigrette. Easily the best salad, and one of the best starters, that I've eaten here.
After a wine fillup from our waiter, who politely asked how we enjoyed the first course, the mains arrived. Chloe was just so-so satisfied with her salmon fillet (zl. 35). The fish itself was fine, but the most she could say for the white wine sauce on top was "it's not terrible." The wine taste was missing, she complained, adding with a hint of cattiness, "the sauce I made last week was better."
I swore off pork shanks (golonka) several months ago, but decided to backslide just this once, for two reasons. First, I'd soon be out of Poland for a few weeks and just wanted "one for the road," as it were, and second, in the menu it's listed as "Malgosia's Golonka" (zl. 22). I figured that if Pani Malgosia wants to put her name on a hunk of pig, it's gotta be good. And it was, hung heavy with dark, tender pork, beneath a thick cover of grilled, fatty pig skin. Instead of mustard or horseradish, it was served with a bowl of mayonnaise for dipping in, which I wouldn't have chosen myself but was quite good anyway. If you already like golonka, 7th Heaven's is a classic. But if you've never had a golonka and the thought of gelatinous mounds of pig fat on your plate gross you out, it's probably not for you. (The best place to have your first golonka is at Buffo, where Maciej Kuron makes a refined, almost elegant version that goes very light on the sometimes offputting skin.)
Chloe ordered an ice cream (zl. 7.50) for dessert, and was very pleased with the three big scoops she got: chocolate, walnut and lemon. She also ordered a tea, and the waiter brought out a big wooden box full of at least 12 kinds to choose from. Chloe's eyes lit up. "Oh no, don't do this," I whispered, having once read an IHT cover to cover in the time it took Chloe to pick out a single pair of socks. She started fingering through every tea bag, and far from losing patience, the waiter pleasantly indulged her, pulling them out to show her and remarking on each one's taste. And in the end she took Earl Grey. She always does.
I had a good double espresso (zl. 5) and a dessert called "cinnamon cakes" (zl. 9.50), a plate of deep-fried pastry triangles, sprinkled with cinnamon and lightly touched with honey. I haven't seen this anywhere else, and the creativity behind the dish pays off. Our dinner bill came to zl. 164 ($41). On a price-to-quality basis, this is a good bet. The menu could use less chicken and more imagination, but the service was tops.
The restaurant was nearly empty when we arrived at 8 p.m. A bow-tied young waiter met us and offered a choice of two tables. We took the one by the entrance to the second dining room. It was only after an embarrassingly long interval of perhaps 10 minutes that I realized that the "entrance" was actually a floor-to-ceiling mirror, and the restaurant was only half as big as I'd thought.
The 7th Heaven was reportedly decorated by the same gentleman who designed the popular and trendy spots Barbados, Zanzibar and Rabarbar. It is flashy, with walls and floors of polished black granite, silver mirrors, a reflective steel ceiling and three mahogany-colored columns topped by golden lamps. "It looks like a night club," Chloe said. "Yeah, the kind where expensive hookers hang out," I added. It was just a tad too glitzy for our tastes, but if it's anything like the designer's other three restaurants, then plenty of Warsaw's "beautiful people" will likely disagree with me.
Our waiter brought menus with no delay. I was afraid that the prices were going to be as "flashy" as the interior, but was happily proved wrong. The starters all run zl. 10-zl. 20, while mains are zl. 20-zl. 35. In fact, the menu seemed to belong in a different restaurant. It was quite standard, traditional fare: lots of chicken, pork, run-of-the-mill salads, steak and salmon. Not the kind of exciting taste experiment the place's snazzy interior had led me to expect.
A word to the waiter brought the wine list. A nice selection of French, Italian, Spanish and Chilean, with almost everything between zl. 40 and zl. 70. I chose a Cote du Rhone '96 (zl. 48), and the well-trained waiter unobtrusively kept our glasses full throughout the meal.
Chloe started with a cheese platter (zl. 12.50). A nice selection of imported cheeses, including camembert, two kinds of brie, a strong and a mellow, a Danish bleu and a gouda, with several slices of each arranged on a wooden platter. I almost never order salads, but the chicken liver salad (zl. 13) caught my eye. Homerun! Lots of tender, moist pieces of chicken liver, straight off the grill, crumbled on top of a bed of lettuce, diced red peppers sprinkled with fresh garlic slices and bacon. Everything was washed with a sweet vinaigrette. Easily the best salad, and one of the best starters, that I've eaten here.
After a wine fillup from our waiter, who politely asked how we enjoyed the first course, the mains arrived. Chloe was just so-so satisfied with her salmon fillet (zl. 35). The fish itself was fine, but the most she could say for the white wine sauce on top was "it's not terrible." The wine taste was missing, she complained, adding with a hint of cattiness, "the sauce I made last week was better."
I swore off pork shanks (golonka) several months ago, but decided to backslide just this once, for two reasons. First, I'd soon be out of Poland for a few weeks and just wanted "one for the road," as it were, and second, in the menu it's listed as "Malgosia's Golonka" (zl. 22). I figured that if Pani Malgosia wants to put her name on a hunk of pig, it's gotta be good. And it was, hung heavy with dark, tender pork, beneath a thick cover of grilled, fatty pig skin. Instead of mustard or horseradish, it was served with a bowl of mayonnaise for dipping in, which I wouldn't have chosen myself but was quite good anyway. If you already like golonka, 7th Heaven's is a classic. But if you've never had a golonka and the thought of gelatinous mounds of pig fat on your plate gross you out, it's probably not for you. (The best place to have your first golonka is at Buffo, where Maciej Kuron makes a refined, almost elegant version that goes very light on the sometimes offputting skin.)
Chloe ordered an ice cream (zl. 7.50) for dessert, and was very pleased with the three big scoops she got: chocolate, walnut and lemon. She also ordered a tea, and the waiter brought out a big wooden box full of at least 12 kinds to choose from. Chloe's eyes lit up. "Oh no, don't do this," I whispered, having once read an IHT cover to cover in the time it took Chloe to pick out a single pair of socks. She started fingering through every tea bag, and far from losing patience, the waiter pleasantly indulged her, pulling them out to show her and remarking on each one's taste. And in the end she took Earl Grey. She always does.
I had a good double espresso (zl. 5) and a dessert called "cinnamon cakes" (zl. 9.50), a plate of deep-fried pastry triangles, sprinkled with cinnamon and lightly touched with honey. I haven't seen this anywhere else, and the creativity behind the dish pays off. Our dinner bill came to zl. 164 ($41). On a price-to-quality basis, this is a good bet. The menu could use less chicken and more imagination, but the service was tops.
