Why are Polish restaurants not successful in the USA?

It does however make it, and the dining experience as a whole, inauthentic.

What's your favourite genre of restaurant in Poland?

For what it's worth, Maggies in OKC was terrible and is now closed.

They're not Polish at all. Perhaps you struggle to understand this, seeing as you've never been/lived here, but that's a fact.

Let's see the menu...

Most of it isn't Polish at all. You simply cannot call American creations "Polish" because they use the same ingredients.

The recipes Boletus cited are from country inns in Poland and similar dishes are served at Warszawa restaurant in the USA. These recipes are Polish. Delphiandomine is wrong.

'Country inns' in Poland??!? Do you mean truck stops?

I can assure you (and indeed the generally esurient) that these recipes are general Central European luxury fare - they are not specifically or typically Polish and I might venture to say that one is more likely to encounter them in Czech or Germany than in Poland, which has a very deliniated culinary repertoire.

Country inns? Now you're showing your ignorance...


I'd actually say that the food found at truckstops are 'typically Polish' - of which none of those dishes are.

Gotta love the idea of an American telling us, residents of Poland, what Polish food is :D

delphiandomine wrote:


right. as in "the same stuff almost everyone else eats in Poland," which happens to be bland, salty and fatty.

again.

unless of course you're in college, then it's bland, cooked by "just adding water", and probably radioactive.

Prince Polo and soup packets, meals of champions I tell ya'.

this argument is over.

Yeah you're right, I got off track in a sense. However, notwithstanding my error, you can't dismiss where Polish food originates from. If a recipe or a dish is and has been a rarity here, it is likely to be so there, i.e. not many Americans of Polish descent or first generation immigrants are well versed enough in those recipes for them to affect the perception of Polish cuisine.

I hope that brings my contribution back in keeping with the original question

Delphiandomine you are claiming that only lowbrow Polish restaurants are Polish because you are a hater of Poland.


My family lived in Poland for centuries before some of it emigrated to the USA. I have many relatives that still reside in Poland. You are merely a Scottish English teacher living in Poland and this makes your self-proclaimed stance as an expert on Poland laughable. You mention your residency in Poland in every post as if that will somehow mitigate the fact that your bitter pettiness is anything but Polish. You know nothing about what is essentially Polish, because that which is essentially Polish is noble, and understanding nobility is beyond you.

And, certainly in your case, didn't return. Delphi knows far more about Poland and Polish food than you probably ever will. Have you visited any restaurants in Poland?

Stop trolling!

Lets keep it civil.

I don't know if he does or doesn't hate Poland but that's an entirely different conversation. Let's look at what is considered american cuisine for comparison.

I say american food and you say hotdogs, hamburgers etc.
In a sense delpi is right, those truckstop burgerjoints that dot the roads are more "Polish" than the recipes boletus mentioned. Ask yourself this: What do you think more Poles have experienced, boneless trout smoked on cedar served with horseradish and baked apple or a Mr. Hamburger?

Those dishes listed sound delightful but I suspect the majority of Poles have never tried them nor know anyone who knows how to prepare them well.

The same could be said about plenty of cuisines. French comes to mind...

Des Essientes wrote:


this provides no evidence that Polish restaurants are "successful in the USA", it provides evidence that there is a polish restaurant in santa monica, california, that is successful.

never in my ENTIRE life in the USA have I heard someone say or suggest, "hey, let's go to the Polish restaurant in town for dinner." never, and i grew up in a very polish part of the USA.

The point is that cuisine is so mixed these days that laying claim to sth that is debatable is fraught with pitfalls. Let chefs hammer it out.

Actually, in Poland, they are. The food served in higher end restaurants is almost never identifiable as clearly Polish - it's always, as Jonni says, Central European in nature. In fact, I'd say that high end Polish cooking is either German or French in nature.

On the other hand, truckstops tend to have very "Polish" food - the kind of food that you want to eat while on the road to remind you of home. Likewise with "milk bars" - again - very Polish food, but low end.


When was the last time you were here? Ahh...silence. Until you actually come and experience Poland for yourself, perhaps you should refrain from commenting about what people actually eat here?


Let's be honest - you know nothing about Poland and her kitchen. The fact that you claim that the "Warszawa" restaurant is Polish is hysterical - the vast majority of that menu would never be eaten by most Poles.


Ah, that old chestnut. It's a source of much amusement in Poland, even to Poles - if you listened to people, you'd think that Poland was a land that was only inhabited by noble people. Let's be honest - your ancestors, like most Poles, were probably peasantry.


Heck, when was the last time you heard someone in Poland say "hey, let's go eat Polish food" unless someone from out-of-Poland was in town?

Foreigner, your comparison of Polish and American cuisine is instructive. You say you associate the latter with


but you shouldn't deny the fact that there exist more refined dishes in American cuisine which the American food critic James Beard documented so well. The same goes for Polish cuisine. You wrote:


Just because the majority of Poles are not chefs doesn't make good Polish chefs, or the dishes they prepare, un-Polish.

I am not suggesting that. I am suggesting they aren't on the average capable cook's repertoire for whatever reason. Compare what the average american can cook and then extrapolate that data into a similar scenario involving immigration and cuisine.

you talking about something else and DeEss is talking about something else, and dephian as usual edit.
De Ess is talking about a traditional polish cuisine which you can find in Polish recipes, sometimes collected in a cook book.
Those traditional dishes are rooted in a kitchen of manors and palaces essentially.
You could find many of those dishes in polish restaurants before the war.
You are talking about polish restaurants today, and there you are right, there is no continuity....nor in cuisine nor in politics nor in culture ..... That doesn't means that dishes De Ess mentioned are not polish, today's Poland is not very Polish herself :(

Never the less you always can find something good :

kuzniasmaku.pl

say what?

I think he means that Poland is changing. Dissatisfaction causes that.

delphiandomine wrote:


absolutely. a country tattered by communism for decades upon decades and still remains poor.....it's expected that the country's national food is going to be cheap ingredients that everybody can access. when it gets fancy, it loses it's "polish-ness".

Having lived in Poland for over 5 years and now being back in the UK i honestly crave Polish food.. The stereotypical Polish meal of Potatoes, Meat and those glorious salads haunts me every time i order a Chinese.

I was actually on my way home yesterday and thought i need some food but i didnt want, Fish n Chips, KFC, Indian or friggen Chinese. I just went to the local Polish shop and bought some Polish ham, Kielbasa, Polish bread and had a proper sandwich. Humm lovely, totally hit the spot.

This is an utterly foolish argument that denies one-thousand years of Polish culinary tradition preceding 1945. There is traditional Polish food that is fancy because the wealthy szlachta were Polish and their cooks, who were also Polish, devised fancy Polish fare. Please read Ironsides' post #384 and be disabused of your false reasoning Fuzzywickets.

Polish sausage with Roleski (English style) mustard, legendary. Calories galore but nice and filling.

What???


Right. So in fact it's a recreation restaurant, somewhat akin to those places in the UK where they serve mead and the waiters dress up as medieval jesters.

There's a chain in Poland (you should go there if you ever make it to Poland) called Chłopski Jadło that uses wooden plates and serves hyper-traditional food. All solid stuff though - none of those dishes mentioned above.

The szlachta, remember, don't exist any more. Their descendents eat sushi, hummous, pasta.

Dude! No one is around from that long ago and those that have such culinary knowledge are few and far between.
It seems the things which constitute modern Poland are in some ways very different from 1582 and cuisine is one of them.

Let's not forget that bigos is Lithuanian-German. That might ruffle a few feathers.

And Napoleon's soldiers on the Russian campaign took the recipe back home, imroved it greatly and gave the world choucroute.

Borrowings are so widespread. Us Scots nabbed kedgeree from the Indians. Bloody good too :)

Unfortunately, your lack of knowledge of Polish affairs is evident here yet again - "culinary tradition" was never enjoyed by the vast majority of Polish people. Anyone with a degree of knowledge of cooking knows that Polish food nowadays is simply Polish peasant food.

Then again - can you tell the difference between Polish food and Ukrainian food? I bet you couldn't...


Yep. There's another place in Poznan that does very similar food - again - nothing like that "Warszawa" restaurant at all.

Perhaps if Des came here, he might be able to see for himself. Somehow though, I imagine he'd get a shock after discovering that his relatives either eat foreign food, or they eat 'truckstop'/'milk bar' food.