Why are Polish restaurants not successful in the USA?

Restaurants with Slavic cuisine are generally not very successful in the US. The Americans are not used to Slavic food, Slavic food is not "fast" and it's not as cheap as "fast". These are three main reasons from my perspective.

And ONLY if it's WELL done but they rarely eat it well done and to me it feels like blood flavored chewing gum.Simply NOT edible.

Medium rare for me. Anything more and it gets like shoe leather....

FUZZYWICKETS is right and that coupled with what Sasha just wrote is probably the answer to the original question. No one is saying it isn't good, that is an entirely different matter.

Have you ever met a Polish women who could cook? Poles don't have a cuisine, they do not have any taste buds.

Foods at any restaurants are coming out of can, the tasty marinara sauce in Italian place, the Italian beef, the sauce on your veggies in Chinese place, the frozen fries in most fast food places - all made to make your taste buds scream with flavor.

Polish foods (cooked at home) are WHOLE FOODS, not much out of a can. This makes a huge difference. Have any of you watch a program on TV how processed foods are made? If you did, you'd never want to eat it. Really, fried chicken is OK, as long as it ran in the back yard first and was fed with natural grains. A vegetable salad full of mayo is fine, as long as it was made from vegetables grown in the yard, not out of a can. You see, I have a lunch with some people at work, I have a salad (mayo, olive oil, apple vinegar etc. - made at home), they have a burger from McDonald's or a sandwich from Jimmy Jones, Subway or other place...considering it a good food. Well, it's not. The red , processed meat(if you can even call it that) went through many 'improvements', flavor enhancements etc, before it endead in the bun. Basically, we eat the same food, but what's IN IT it's different. So, the everyday polish food make seem bland, but it's much better for you. At the end, our body cells know the difference. That's when you end up with size 18. Not to mention, I get looks when I say I walked 6 miles last night...

You started to make a very valuable observation regarding processed foods and then somehow twisted into a "our food is the best" post- pity.

Pride comes before the fall and this is another example of it. Blindly adhering to the idea Polish food isn't (to varying degrees) subject to the same "economic" factors which pollute food sources throughout Europe is naive at best and obnoxiously retarded at worst.

Foreigner4 wrote:


a lot of people are guilty of this on here regarding polish food. it's like that one thing they constantly cling to, always have to defend. as if, "well, if nothing else is superior here, at least we don't eat fake food like you guys!"

I don't think that a meat/potato, laden with salt diet is "much better for you".

Polish food makes sense if you drink.Then the drink adds the flavor.There is no self fullfillment factor as in mediteranean cuisine.From slavic food onlynczech food is relevant and can have some commercial success.

Floury food are hardly super healthy. The pierogi ruskie I get are often dripping with fat, so much so that I have to wear only underwear when eating them at home or else the fat will stain my shirt or breeks. It's far from healthy and let's not even say that salads are strictly Polish.

Polish restaurants could increasentheir succss if they had polish girls as waitresses and played disco polo.

Cause it is true. Polish bread is real bread, not that cotton ball sponge you can get at your place.

For me the tragedy is, the food I enjoy eating and the produce I cook with for my family is under attack from economic powers (it seems) to be more "profitable." This is worrying and I sincerely hope that Poles won't put their heads in the ground like so many other people have but will instead fight this and preserve the alleged integrity of their food (sources)...

In Polish restaurants various inedible crap, like fat and tendons is thrown away. In other restaurants, it is minced and added to regular dishes. That is why they are more popular.

Because fat is tasty when cooked!

There are rather stupid and uninformed generalizations on both sides of the dispute. There are these Polish foods and those Polish foods - a peasant diet and refined diet. A blant, boring and repetetive one vs. "a heaven in a mouth". The one that you only eat on certain days because the tradition or rituals say so, but avoid it for the remaining days of the year. A lack of imagination vs. inspirational creativity.

For centuries the Polish cuisine was being inspired by culinary traditions of West, South and East. From Italy came various vegetables: pomidory (tomatoes), włoszczyzna (a bundle of herbs a'la Italian), kalafiory (califlowers), kalarepy (kohlrabis), selery (celeries), sałaty (salads), tymianek (thyme), bazylia (basil), koper (dill), etc.

Spices came from the East: szafran (saffron), goździki (cloves), cynamon (cinnamon), gałka muszkatołowa (nutmeg), ziele angielskie (allspice), etc.
From France - the art of making various sauces.
From Germany - the heavy food, sausages, the art of bread making.

So whoever said that Polish food was bland he must have been exposed only to a peasant cuisine. Actually, the old Polish cuisine was known for heavy uses of spices. This was partially justified by lack of refrigeration and slightly ranked smell of meats. I sometimes have an impression that heavy use of hot peppers in Mexican dishes serves exactly the same purpose: with your taste buds burning you cannot smell nor taste anything.

But I agree that most Polish restaurants in North America is of the peasant type (no offense given, just an expression) and for three reasons:

+ The owners usually employ cooks (as opposed to the real chefs) that have emigrated from some sub-carpathian villages and who only know one type of food - the peasant food: schabowy (schnitzel), surówki (raw grated vegetables), barszcz (borcht), bigos (hunter's stew), gołąbki (stuffed cabbage), grochówka (pea soup), etc.

+ Restaurant guests, especially those of the Polish or CEE background, like to occasionally sample this type of food, because it reminds them the old country. But if they cook at home at all they usually cook something more refined than the Vienna Schnitzel - the stuff they have learned from their mother or granny: zrazy zawijane (beef roulades fill with various stuffing), bitki wołowe (stewed beef slices in spiced sauces), kaczka pieczona nadziewana ... (roast duck stuffed with ...). Believe me or not, some people still exchange old recipes. My mother's home menu had very little in common with stuff they serve in Toronto restaurants, and was was probably four times their menu choices. Just to mention her vegetables soups, the best I ever eaten :-), or ten or so fruit cold summer soups with croutons and clouds of beaten egg whites or cream.

+ Notwithstanding the menu choice the "peasant cooks" do their job rather well. But I have also eaten in places whether a cook had only an approximate idea how a particular dish supposed to taste, or she made an unforgivable decision to save herself some work. For example, in one of the Polish restaurants in Toronto they reheat the "czysty barszcz z uszkami" (clear borsch with tiny dumplings stuffed with mushrooms or meat) every time another customer requests it. The dumplings should be cooked separately for each guest in clear water, then added to reheated barszcz - otherwise the dumplings become soggy and unappetizing. Polish clear chicken soup should be served with thin spaghetti noodles cooked afresh, sprinkled with freshly cut herbs of their choice (italian parsley, menthe, basil..) and not with reheated thick tube-like macaroni and soggy vegetables.

If you google "kuchnia staropolska" or something of this sort you will find hundreds of local village restaurants in Poland, offering menus which are 10 times more interesting than any best known Polish restaurants in any big city in North America - with various fish (grilled, broiled, with or without sauces), fowl, game, beef, pork, various salads and vegetable dishes. This is a sad fact, but there is no motivation to improve menus of Polish restaurants in USA or Canada. But thing like "staropolska zupa piwna" (Old Polish beer soup) are definitely easy to make and sound like a good magnet for new customers.

Here are some examples of dishes, which I found on menus of some country inns in Poland:

Exquisite fish soup with salmon and crayfish, saffron and parsley. A Polish soup? Definitely. I was told that during three stages of cooking of such soup a lesser quality fish plus vegetables are first boiled for some time and then removed to produce a thick and tasty broth. Only in the last stage the fish and crayfish are added and cooked just right.

Boneless trout, smoked over the beech wood smoke, served with horseradish and baked apple, with cranberries and grilled potato. A Polish dish? Definitely.

Pickled lamb's leg, marinated with herbs. Specifically Polish? No, but what makes it Polish are choice of local herbs and the side dishes: buckwheat, hunter's sauce, red cabbage in wine with raisons. Yes, the buckwheat groats. Not everyone likes it since it is an acquired taste, but you should try it sometime.

Pickled doe's ham - an old Polish recipe.

Whole baked young boar - a hunter's recipe.

Shrimps fresh from the frying pan, thyme scented, served on a bed of crisp lettuce

Veal marinated in herbs, served with chanterelles, green asparagus and garlic butter. Polish? Yes. Most of you do not even know and appreciate "kurki" (chanterelles).

But it is unfair competition. Polish restaurants will never be in the black if they continue throwing away fat and tendons and cartilage and udders and ears and hooves and brains. Other national restaurants use up all of that inedible stuff and prepare wonderful meals for clients, that is why thye are able to go down with costs.

Polish restaurant owners are too decent guys that is why they are losing.

You are right, however, when was the last time you were in Poland? Any McD's, KFC or Kebab shop has a line up out the door- at any hour during the day.

Fast Polish food is becoming normal. There are potatoes in a box, pre made cutlet, krokiety, salads- everything. The people are getting fatter fast.
I have lived here for 9 years- the first year, everybody was thin and now there are fatties everywhere.

We only have one in our town,, and its well known.

They even have banquets for weddings, funerals and any other occasion you can think of.

But I have heard ( never been) of few others in and around my area and I plan to go try
them out just havent really had time to.

seanus wrote:


but.....but.....it's natural!

Boletus wrote:


let's be honest......of all the polish people on this forum, how many of you have actually eaten this meal? digging up some random recipe you saw one day in a real deal polish restaurant hardly says anything about the debate at hand.

the stuff is bland and fatty with loads of salt. period.

Rarely.

I very much doubt that the babcia's doing all the cooking are going to be cooking this stuff.

Must admit, if I'm going to put the effort in to cook something complicated, I'm going to cook Italian, Chinese, Indian, etc...certainly not Polish.

I like the fact that with Polish food what you see is what you get. There are no hidden cornstarches, additives or artificial flavorings. Even with home cooked meals of other origins, that's usually not true. Unless you make your own pasta when cooking italian. Or your own spices/flavorings when cooking oriental.

I like smoked trout, it is tastier than smoked salmon and not so salty.

Boletus, you're the man! Your post was an inspired piece of writing. Thank you.

FUZZYWICKETS



I will tell you right now that you sound very ridiculous defending your un-defendable positions, because you seem never to cook anything yourself.

I can cook this particular meal even over a campfire. Let me see... I do not need any sophisticated stuff at all. Sorry but you seem just clueless. Just give me a chance and maybe ten minutes and I will deliver a good dinner just described. I'll put the smoked trout inside of an aluminum foil. Then I will add plenty of Italian parsley - only because I like this taste for this particular meal (you can experiment with some other 10 or so herbs if you wish: basil, menthe, oregano, thyme, whatever) plus the basic salt and black pepper, and so on. Five minutes later it is all done. Horseradish? Anyone in Poland (but apparently not you) knows exactly at least three or four recipes how to make a good horseradish side dish. Plain. Creamy. Eggy. Beat-root based. Grilled potato? You must be kidding - you can easily bake it in a clay, or just in hot ashes.

delphiandomine wrote:


i've been to plenty of houses in poland for meals and it's the same stuff, every time. different cities, 100's of kilometers apart.....same stuff, as previously described. my polish grandmother made the same damn stuff as well.

Unfortunately, for the American masses Polish food(along with Russian, German, Hungarian,etc) just isn't sexy. It lacks the cache that the Mediterranean cuisines have.......just sayin

to be fair, he was quite specific on at least one point and that is the traditional cuisine ONE IS LIKELY TO ENCOUNTER in Poland is not refined in the use of herbs like in French, Italian or even Japanese cooking, the flavours from spices don't run across the board like a lot of "curry" dishes do. It's delicious but it is predictable and it is stodgy.

The recipes you listed look fabulous and no one is saying herbs aren't used in Polish cuisine but generally they are used to the same effect over and over again your culinary skills and repertoire are far outside the norm here in my experience.

This thread is about Polish restaurants in America. This thread claims they are not successful, but myself, and others, have provided examples of successful Polish restaurants in the USA, and thus proven the thread's titular claim wrong. The Polish restaurant I cited, Warszawa in Santa Monica California, serves the very sort of fare that Boletus has given us examples of. These dishes are undeniably Polish and even if the majority of Polish restaurants, in Poland herself, don't serve such haute cuisine that does not make the food at Warszawa restaurant any less Polish. Restaurants employ people called chefs and some are better at their vocation than others. Many people on this thread believe they can condemn all Polish cooking just because there are some restaurants that do it poorly and these people are fools.