Pasta imperfect

By : Greg Goodale

    Trattoria la Primavera

    Gdansk, ul. Grobla 1/13

    Tel. (58) 305-1525

    Hours:

   Mon.-Sat.: Noon-last guest, Sun.: 1 p.m.-last guest

   As the end of summer draws near, the restaurants on Gdańsk’s Motława waterfront start to look somewhat unloved and empty.

   With the tourists gone, the waiters dither in back rooms leaving the occasional customer to wonder if any place is open for business. So if you’re visiting the Baltic port town this autumn, it’s probably a good idea to look for where the locals go to dine. Anywhere with a crowd has to be high up on the list of recommendations.

   With this theory in mind I took along Jeff and Robert, experienced gastronomic explorers, to set out in search of a piece of Gdańsk to call our own.

   A brief meander from the waterfront, past the gargoyles and amber galleries of ulica Mariacka and the towering brick fa˜ade of St. Mary’s, we found ulica Grobla, home to Trattoria la Primavera. The city’s heavily ornamental Hanseatic style ends at its lavishly ornate rococo door. La Primavera comes decked out in yellow, making for a sparse, bright and lively room with a prime atmosphere for sober daytime dining.

   The lightly dispersed tables give a fair amount of privacy to a colorful smattering of guests. A large family attended to its children’s capricious appetites at the table closest to the bar, while at the next table a group of businessmen huddled around a laptop supping on glasses of white wine.

   Our waiter was polite and helpful, but given the size of the menu, we could have used a guardian angel with more conviction in his recommendations, and he returned three times before we were ready to order. With 23 main dishes not including fish or pasta, I wished more of Warsaw’s regular lunchtime venues were as richly stocked.

   We started with cold bruschetta topped with a tomato, basil and garlic sauce. Jeff and Robert both had Isalata Italiana – a sizeable plateful of fresh vegetables with hunks of ripe gorgonzola. Jeff liked the noisy croutons that adorned the salad while Robert felt the seasoning was too conservative, with a shortage of thyme and garlic.

   Like the salads, the pasta dishes also suffered a shortage of robust herbal flavors, and Jeff compared them to standard American fast-food pasta – he was certainly not bowled over by his tagliatelle con frutti di mare. On my previous encounter with this dish I had waded through a rich, garlicky fondue spiked with oysters, shrimp, king prawns and calamari, topped with a hefty sprinkling of caviar and parmesan. Trattoria la Primavera dished out a reheated sauce that was at best bland, with no distinct flavors and hardly any tantalizingly fishy aroma. Robert’s spaghetti alla carettiera was a more pleasant, if oily version, and although he suspected that the sauce of mushrooms, tuna and bacon was dulled down for Polish tastes, the ingredients were fresh and certainly came across more prominently than the seafood pasta. My tagliatelle with truffle sauce came with the waiter’s recommendation for those seeking something new. The truffle paste was used sparingly, making the effect agreeably mild, marred only by unevenly cooked pasta. It didn’t keep me interested for long, and I wished for a side salad to break up the monotony.

   The trout with bacon, olives and onion stared up at me with the aid of a pea, popped into its eye socket by a chef with a truly medieval sense of fun. While not quite a masterpiece, it showed what the chef was capable of cooking up. The meat was light and flaky, while the bacon and onion sauce was a rich, sturdy complement. Jeff had picked out a bottle of crisp Pinot Grigo that went well with the fish and I wished I had ordered something more ambitious, like the sea bass in tarragon sauce or swordfish scallops with crabmeat.

   The tiramisu had clearly spent too long in the fridge and was not a pleasant experience, but we washed it down with some decent coffee. Overall, La Primavera has far better service and interior design than culinary flare. While welcoming and relaxed, the chef failed to light up the pasta dishes enough for us to want to return someday. Our Hanseatic lunch for three came to zł. 260 ($61) with wine.

   On the menu:

    Bruschetta zl.6

    Isalata Italiana zl. 15

    Spaghetti alla carretiera zl.25

    Tagliatelle con frutti di mare zl.25

    Tagliatelle with truffle sauce zl. 25

    Trout in bacon with olives and onion zl. 25

    Tiramisu zl. 14.50