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Published: April 23rd 2006
(This is going to be boring for most of you, i'm cateloging two meals in two days)
I had very little food when I began my Auschwitz day yesterday. A few spoonfuls of left over pasta, a drink, some pretzels, and then a stick of Halvah (chałwa in Polish!). Then off I went. While at the Auschwitz Museum I had a few chances to buy snackies but everything was marked up and I was too cheap, so I opted to wait until I got back to Krakow before eating again.
I was sooo hungry while riding the bus (this sounds familiar...) that I started imagining all the different kinds of food I could possibly have when I got back. My mental culinary rolodex. I imagined Chinese food but scratched that pretty quickly (one bad experience already), then I thought maybe Mexican, a bit fat fish burrito or a fish taco and with chips and salsa... Or Japanse, a steaming hot bowl of udon noodles with a butterflied tempura shrimp and maybe a few nigiris... Or Korean, something spicy, maybe a hotplate, and kim chee... Or Indian, baingan bartha or aloo gobi or a dosa and nan and jasmine rice or maybe a fish curry and maybe a lassi!
Oh, the mental rolodex is endless!
But, then reality hits and I realize that I'm in Krakow and my choices ARE in fact, quite limited.
I settled on Indian, having read about this place called "Bombai Tandoori" in my guidebook. Which I really should not trust ANY MORE.
I got to BT and tried to spy a menu outside. Didn't see one, but there was a sign in both Polish and English that said that they have the only tandoori oven in all of Krakow! Sounds impressive, doesn't it.
I went in.
I wasn't the only foreigner nor was I surrounded by a bunch of locals. I got a table and the menu, and started to look through the offerings. Oh, it looked so promising! They had the appetizers, the tandoors, the curries, the biriyanis, the nans, the veggie section (yes!), and lassi drinks.. I was really hungry so I decided to splurge and get 2 things:
I got the baingan bartha and the fish curry. Either came with rice or nan, so I order the "fragrant rice" as a side. The Polish waitress asked me if I wanted the dishes mild, medium, or spicy. I said spicy, assuming that the regular Polish folks don't usually go for spicy so if I say medium, it's going to be weak.
Well, when my food came, I was so disappointed. Imagine how excited I was while thinking about the dinner, and put a negative sign in front of it, that was how disappointed I was. 😞
The baingan bartha was prepared in a short cut way. The eggplant wasn't fired first (baked or flamed) and it didn't have the right texture. There were little cubes of eggplant when there should've been just a big mushy pile.
Eggplant cubes = eggplant cubes ≠ baingan bartha
Eggplant mushy pile = baingan bartha
And the fish curry... It was ok.
But what I was really unhappy about with both of the dishes was that by "spicy", they didn't do anything more than throw on extra pepper flakes. My two dishes, which back at home would be oh so yummy and fragrant, smelled like nothing. I didn't see/taste any bay leaves, no cardamom, no ginger... This is Indian food? Who's cooking in the back?! And my "fragrant rice" which I had assumed would be jasmine or basmati (because those are fragrant) turned out to be just regular short grain rice. For that I paid 4 zl??
ugh. I was mega depressed when I was eating because I had sooo been looking forward to a spicy delicious Indian meal, but there I was, eating food that looked kinda sorta Indian but tasted not SPICE-y at all, just hot. I felt so duped. And the worst part was that it was a really expensive meal by my current standards. When the bill finally came -- after I had waited for about 10 minutes, after the waitress had already taken away my plates and I was sitting there talking to my imaginary friends -- 44.50 zl. That's like 15 bucks. 15 bucks for shitty food, arrr! I could've had ramen noodles at home for 2 zl!
I think the moral of this story is --
1. Don't trust the guide book, and
2. Don't goto ethnic restaurants.
* * *
Two museums in the old town were free today so I came into see them. One was the Jan Matejko house, the other was the art exhibit above the Cloth Hall. I went to the JM house first b/c I had a route planned out: JM house first, then Cloth Hall, then lunch, then the churches. It was a straight line and I wouldn't have to back track.
While I was standing outside the JM house and looking at the signage, Kristen came along! Kristen is "one of the Americans" in my school. Well, she's not in the group classes anymore, she's only doing private lessons. But she's "one of us". So we chit chat for a bit, go in, and look at the exhibits together. We both confessed to know very little about the man, other than:
1. he's Polish,
2. he's an artist/portrait artist, and
3. he did a lot of paintings about Polish history.
He's a native son type of guy. And we both were there today b/c it's the free day and we're both on tight budgets here. :-/
The exhibit was pretty decent. They had photographs of his work, some originals, artifacts, furniture, etc. And the creme de la creme (IMHO) of the tour:
The
Largest collection of torture implements in all of Poland.
Ooohhhkay. Because JM purchased them when they were discovered in the celler/basement of the old townhall (?) Yeah. Interesting. No, it really was! They had things for snapping the ankles, crushing the hips, crushing the skull, and a big rolling pin with spikes.
...And you thought I was only going to talk about food...
So after the tour, we were really hungry. ;-)
We were close to the old town and Kristin (or maybe it's spelled Kristen, I dunno) and I decided to eat together before we split. We were both talking about how it's kinda pathetic that we're traveling by ourselves and then when we're out we see all these people hanging in groups. And when we eat, we're always eating alone (like I did last night at the Indian restaurant). We walked for a bit and ended up at one of the cafes (Pizza Dominium) that served food and had an out door area set up. Oh, that was nice. We got a table, we got our menus (she got the Polish one, I got the Englsh one, Hey!) and we were like, oh, I want this, I want that...
I wanted the salad nicoise AND a pizza, but I wasn't sure if that would be too much. Kristen also wanted a salad and a pizza, so we ended up each getting a salad and then splitting a big pizza.
Oh, yes, we spluraged.
My salad nicoise was as good as the menu said! It had the greens, it had the olives, the tuna (ok, so it was canned tuna and not pan seared ahi tuna, but I'm in Krakow), the egg, cucumber, perfect! And Kristen got the Greek salad and it looked yummy, too. So there we were, each with a HUGE plate of salad in front of us, just shoveling the food into our mouths (at least I was).
And then the pizza came. Ohhh. Pizza. And that was perfect, too, half with cheese and half without. We ate EVERYTHING. Admittedly, that last slice of pizza was going in much slower than its predecessors, but oh everything was so yummy!
Imagine how miserable I was after my Indian dinner last night, put a + sign in front of it, that was how happy I was this afternoon. And my share of lunch came out to only 30 zlotys. Less than that shitty dinner last night.
Ok, that's my rant and rave.
Time to head home for my pauper's dinner of ramen noodles.
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Dinner
Hey, I really like reading your entries... they remind me of my time learning Spanish in Barcelona! So, anyway after reading your food worries here is a killer website for restaurants in Krakow: http://www.inyourpocket.com/poland/krakow/en/category?chid=138 They have everything you said you wanted.... :) good luck