Cafe Piastowska

Restaurant

Cafe Piastowska
Tegnergatan 5
111 40 Stockholm
Sweden

Phone (46) (8) 21 25 08

Overview

Eva and I tried out the Cafe Piastowska, a Polish restaurant in Stockholm, the other week.

Ambience

Cafe Piastowska has been in existence for quite a few years in Stockholm and is run by a Swedish gentleman and his Polish wife who have, shall we say, a rather distinctive style and approach to the restaurant trade.

It consists of two floors, the ground floor bar and restaurant area and a basement which is a veritable rabbit warren of nooks and crannies.

The walls were decorated with all manner of knickknacks and artifacts, including Polish imperial flags. Red velour was very much the dominant texture, complemented by the white lace table cloths placed on top of crimson cloths.

We sat downstairs for our meal, then retired upstairs for our coffees and liqueurs.

The atmosphere created by the basement decor and candlelight was very romantic, even though Eva's part of the sofa that she was sitting on collapsed.

You are advised to book, as the owners tend to open and shut when they please. Indeed, the owner was happily going to bar us from entering (even though it was not full) until we told him that we had in fact made a booking.

Menu

The menu was very limited, and only offered soup and three main courses; schnitzel, steak and another dish that I have forgotten.

Service

The service was rather eccentric. When we sat down we were almost instantaneously served a bowl of potato and leek soup, before we had even seen the wine list. It was evident that you had to make sure that you repeated the order to ensure that the staff grasped fully what you wanted.

Rumour has it, that if they don't like you they make it very clear to you indeed.

When we were upstairs, partaking of our vodkas and coffees, we entered into a rather lengthy chat with the owner and his daughter who were sitting on the next table. Evidently we had passed "acceptability" test.

Food

The soup was good, but I found my main course of steak with egg and horseradish to be a little disappointing. The steak not being that high quality, and the potatoes underneath being a little greasy.

Eva managed to persuade them to serve her a blinis to start with. This was rather a bizarre form of blinis, as it came smothered with a variety of ingredients (poached salmon, egg and caviar) and was rather greasy.

Eva chose the schnitzel for her main course, which was rather better than her starter in terms of quality.

The meal, which included a bottle of Chardonnay 3 vodkas and 6 Irish coffees (yes, we "did it large" that night), came to 1340SEK before tip.

Overall Opinion

A romantic, eccentric restaurant; if you want to go out and get drunk in a cosy environment, then this is the place for you. However, don't expect the food to be that exciting.