Gdansk, Poland
Mall food! Is there anything better, or worse, than mall food? In Asia, this is often a collection of the best streetfood around, moved indoors because of massive state-sponsored cleanup programmes. In the UK and USA, this is generally pre-boiled plastic regurgitated by homeless people, reformed into turd shapes, battered, and deep fried.
In this particular mall, there were a couple of traditional Polish food outlets, serving up stews, roasts, grills and a variety of salads. Absolutely brilliant, if you aren't vegetarian. Which, if you're sensible, is no problem. Aside from the polish fare, pizza, kebabs and randomly 'ethnic' food, world-wide cuisine is well represented by MacDonald's and KFC.
Crumbed schnitzel, chicken and stewed pigs' knuckles. Yum.
Around 6-8 meat options, four salads and plenty of potato: yum!
I opted for a freshly made 'de volaille', which is what the Poles call their version of chicken Kiev. Why they use the French for chicken, and we allude to Iron Curtain origins, I have no idea. The Polish version is a chicken breast that has been opened up, and wrapped around a cold stick of garlic-herb butter, battered/crumbed and fried.
Yummy, yummy chicken and buttery goodness.
The chicken was freshly cooked (we having lucked out with a fresh batch), and hence the crispy batter crunched deliciously against tender chicken, bathed in garlicky-buttery goodness.
A opted for the schab, a beaten out and marinated pork loin, grilled to order. Also served with chips, but with a healthy of serving of kapusta salad.
The pork was perfectly cooked with nary a bit of gristle, and tender enough to work through with plastic child-proof cutlery. The marinade, I am told, is generically Polish, with sweet paprika, marjoram etc, but tasted delicious. The fries were competent, and the coleslaw-style salad was amazing. Tasting very similar to KFC coleslaw in New Zealand (which uses a mayonnaise with more acidity), the salad cut through the meat flavours nicely, and was incredibly light.
All washed down with a couple of pints of Zywiec: Polish lager.
The damage: for two hot mains, two serving of chips and a salad, plus two tins of Poland's finest lager: 28 zlote, which is around £7 by current exchange rates.
Postscript:
While poking around supermarkets in the area, we found these:
If you look closely, the food is shrink wrapped to give a 3d effect. You can literally see every nook and cranny of your meal.
The colours are vibrant, and not the usual TV-dinner mush. You can see distinctive and separated vegetables, as well as the protein component. On the other hand, it looks exactly like the plastic food model/toys you see in Japanese restaurant windows. Hmm.
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