All jokes aside, Poland is not the first place you think of when you think of fine dining. That’s mainly because most Polish restaurants in town serve up a basic kind of grub, and good and hearty though it may be, it’s more peasant food than cuisine. You know: sausages, pierogi, potato pancakes, sauerkraut, fruit-laden pastries.
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All of which is a long time and a long way from the late, late 20th century and the northwest side of Chicago, where a few spots offer upscale settings and some interesting variations on their native cooking, in the culinary idiom known as “continental.” With one exception, these places are sufficiently inconsistent to prevent their gathering a high star count in today’s market of bright bistros and trendy trattorias, but they’ll give your taste buds a change of ethnic pace, as you discover a culinary world beyond blintzes, for relatively low cost.
Farther up Milwaukee Avenue, in Logan Square, Ted Kowalczyk has created a “fine dining” adjunct to his wonderful Orbit restaurant, one of the best home-style Polish eateries in town. Called the Royal (formerly “International”) Dining Room, it has a lot of Old World charm with its fancy chandeliers and sconces, mirrored pillars, and gallery of oil paintings: scenes of the homeland and portraits of Polish royalty and military heroes. There’s a dance floor and live music on weekends.
Entrees come with a soup, so don’t miss the good white borscht if it’s available that day. (Please, no letters about whether borscht is really Polish, Jewish, or Russian. It’s all.)
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Robert Drea.
