Why are Polish restaurants not successful in the USA?

Your lack of knowledge regarding what is, and what is not, a valid argument is showing here Delphiandomine. (I suggest you attend university and take a course in critical reasoning.) I never claimed that the majority of Polish people ate manor fare. That however doesn't make it any less Polish.

It does however make it untypical. There's a wonderful Russian cookery book, pre-revolutionary, that in the days of the USSR was read as fiction. None of the citizens (and none of the ancestors of 90% of them) had ever eaten anything like that. The situation is the same in Poland. The culinary repertuar is not restaurant food.


How rude :-(

Has the original question been answered yet to anyone's satisfaction?

I think so, For 4

Shall we adjourn this meeting? All in favour?

LOL. I can't fully agree with that, pgtx.

yeah, i said my piece in post 100 and something.


Its not even possible, a Pole is on order - that's an opinion Pole, not a Polish person.

I believe awareness/advertising is the downfall.

Somebody needs to open Polish fast food restaurants and people will go there. The Germans did it with Wienerschnitzel. It's not enough to have a restaurant here and there and charge a lot of money.

This thread's titular question, if it is read as a blanket statement about all Polish restaurants in the USA, is based upon a false assumption, because not all Polish restaurants in the USA are unsuccessful. If this thread's titular question is meant to refer to specific Polish restaurants in the USA that have failed, then it should include examples of failed Polish restaurants in the USA, but this thread has few, if any, of those. However, this thread is amusing in that it provides numerous examples of the twisted illogical contortions that some people will engage in to deny Poland's culinary acheivements.

Never did I claim that Polish cookery is original. In contrary, in my first post in this thread I was very careful to stress the influences of many other cuisines on Polish cooking traditions. Such influences go every each way - the menus are refined, changed, transformed and borrowed by other peoples.

But my main point was to show that Polish cookery is far from bland, as long as one looks beyond his own nose, experience and his close family tradition, or beyond fast food facilities. I am not going to write any essay about Polish foods that qualify as haute cuisine, or to write a guide to good restaurants in Poland that serve such dishes. There are plenty such guides and gastronauci.pl could help to identify facilities serving Old Polish "dworska" cuisine. Some of those are located in renovated manors and carefully serve only those dishes that have been recorded and discovered in that particular area. I have no time for listing all of this, but I can point you to few eye openers.

Take for example "Hunter's cookery". They list about 400 various game dishes in these categories: venison, boar, hare, red deer (known as elk in CEE), fowl.

Of the fowl category, I know only precious few recipes, but such entries as "duck with oranges, raisons and walnuts" was served in my house. We could not afford pheasant dishes, but "wild duck in black currants sauce" was occasionally served. Woodcocks would be served in sauce made of morello cherry confiture, cream and horseradish, and occasionally partridges would be brought by some friendly hunter.

I will translate ingredients of one partridge recipe: "Roast partridges with lingonberries", just to demonstrate the fallacy of saying that Polish spices are reduced to just salt an pepper.

2 partridges,
salt,
marjoram
tarragon,
basil,
15 grams of pork fat,
5 grams of lard.
sauce:
4 - 5 tablespoons fried lingonberries,
1 - 2 cloves,
cinnamon
1 teaspoon of flour,
cup of boiled water,
a few tablespoons of dry white wine (you can only add a glass of dry white wine).

Hare dishes used to be very popular in Poland, and the art of making hare pate is still probably known to many families in Poland. The site presents long list of pages of the main dishes made of hare, with the spices, fruits an vegetables ranging from: sour cherries, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, herbs, cream, grey sauce, jellies, horseradish, mushrooms, beer and so on. There are hare dishes referring to Polish provinces, regions and professions (a'la burgher, king, hetman, advocate) ; and yes - to international recipes (Milan, Dalmatia) as well. Of all those, I only tried the few - but they were all delicious.

For any serious discussion of Polish evolving culinary traditions I refer you to "Food and Drink in Medieval Poland. Rediscovering a Cuisine of the Past - Maria Dembińska, Translated by Magdalena Thomas, Revised and Adapted by William Woys Weaver". I downloaded it from some French site (sorry I forgot which one). It has 123 double site plates. Fascinating read.

There was one in Anaheim CA that went out of business and there's now a Mexican restaurant there.

No, i dont think so. Polish restaurants in the US will be very far and few between, its virtually impossible to tell if they actually have been successful or not.

Fcuk it lets just get Gordon Ramsey on the case. That guy doesnt mess with his words, anybody here follow him? Kitchen Nightmares USA and all that....

he'd get banned after his first post.

Wouldn't he just

That restaurant was mentioned earlier in the thread by Beckski, in post # 321, and she attributed its failure not to its menu, nor to its service, but to the fact that its name didn't identify it as a Polish restaurant, but merely as a BBQ. This most likely prevented many people seeking an exotic dining experience from trying it and frustrated other diners coming in off the street looking for typical Southern American BBQ fare.

That makes sense. But then why didn't they stay and eat there when they found out it was a Polish restaurant and then keep going back?

I assume that upon entering a restaurant called "Mr. Smoke BBQ" many people were taken aback to find that it was actually a Polish restaurant, and, Southern BBQ being a "down home" American cuisine, the sorts of folk drawn to it are probably among the more reluctant to try an unknown "ethnic food" so surprizingly foisted upon them. Many may have even felt deliberately duped by a shadey restauranteur, but this one example of why a Polish restaurant was not successful in the USA is must be rather anomolous, and thus of little consequence in answering this thread's query.

Des Essientes wrote:


geeze, and after all that time, they decided their staples should be fried dough with completely basic "stuff" inside and random ground up fatty pork parts stuffed inside a sleeve.

go to any avg. polish family's house and you'll surely see what effects "one-thousand years of Polish culinary tradition" had on their dinner plates.

In majority of his shows, there is a moment when Gordon goes way too far with the insults, and a restaurant owner has enough. I always wonder what amount of money, or legal contracts, persuade him to go back, or not to punch Gordon in the face.

The only successful Polish restaurants I've ever heard of are in large Polish communities, such as Polonia, in Hamtramck, MI, which Anthony Bourdain covered.

There's one in Los Angeles called Polka Restaurant that has been around for years and people of all backgrounds go there. I hear the food is good.

Here is a link to a prominent LA Public Television show's visit to Polka Restaurant:

Many are probably going about it all wrong in the case of the bbq joint it should have called itself PoloniaBBQ and it would have done better to just have a flag (preferably with the eagle) a bit of Chopin in the background and most importantly in ethnic restaurants, fusion foods such as the menu offered by Boletus. Just one variety of hunters stew?? There should be a classic(matka's), and several regional ones, just for the sake of marketing, simply inventions of a creative chef. If it's good they'll come back to try another variety.

Repeat customers are necessary for survival.

PS. Never have fat waitresses...

Don't forget the pickle! :) Now you're talkin'

you're probably on to something there. another thing to ask is who the target customer should be:
blue collar workers
or families
or office workers at lunch (probably a bad idea there)
mall goers in a food court

...that's probably the biggest one to get right at the beginning.

Good way to lose weight? Marry a polish man, the food is not nice!
Really like most polish culture but the food bland, bland, bland!!!!!
Answers the question about polish restaurants any where other than Poland!!!!! Not sucessful

LOL. Kitchen is a woman’s domain, testing her culinary skills ranks high when it comes to choosing a wife, now get back to the kitchen and bake me some pie woman!


Looks like someone needs to spice up their love life, change the position once in a while. Perhaps in a year or two with proper diet and exercise you’ll be able to do that.


American, right?, just tell me where you’re from and I’ll bet there’s at least one in your area that have been there for ages but sadly you only know your the way to McDonald's.

In the USA, there are approx. 3.7 million Chinese Americans compared to about 10 million Polish Americans.

Why are there a bazzillion Chinese restaurants in the USA, yet so few Polish restaurants, even though the Polish population is triple the size? Why do Chinese restaurants succeed, no matter where they open one?

Could it have ANYTHING to do with the food they're serving?

People simply enjoy more flavorful, diverse meals in the USA. Polish food is too boring and bland.

Straight up.

Authentic Chinese restaurants don't do too well in the US. They just adapted better :)

It sure does, shows how impatient the Yanks are. Instant gratification, drive through culture, some food requires a bit longer to cook and some TLC during preparation and of course at least an hour to enjoy the fruits of your labor to delight all your senses. Having it served on porcelain plates and eating it with real silverware in company of friends and family instead of eating it alone out of a carton in your car on the way home also helps in delighting your senses and enjoying few pleasures that life has to offer, but hay whatever floats your boat, who am I to judge?