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| - I really hate to knock an old-style Eastern European place serving homestyle food - the way to my heart, especially because there aren't as many around. This restaurant, however, is not as good as I would've expected based on the 4.5 star average rating.
Most of my Eastern European food experiences have been of the Hungarian variety, and I love and treasure the Hungarian food I've been able to get in Toronto. I was expecting Cafe Polonez, though Polish, to have roughly similar dishes prepared in roughly similar ways, and this ended up being true. I ordered the paprikash with potato and cheddar perogies instead of the potatoes.
The food took a bit to come, but arrived fresh. The perogies were really good, definitely homemade but not overly oily or fatty. The filling was good - no complaints. The salads - I honestly don't remember much about them, but I feel like the beets were good. I mean, I like beets and all. I don't even know that I tried much else of the salads - just not my thing.
The paprikash was basically why this wasn't 4 stars. The meat was nice - good texture, tender enough that you can cut the cubes with a fork but not too tender that it's turned into mush or fallen apart. The sauce/broth/stew was hearty and all, but I found it extremely tomato-y. This didn't quite jibe with the mushrooms and cooked onions, and might have been exacerbated by a few too many peppers.
Service was solid. I actually thought the price was a little high for what you get, but it's a nice space and all and the portions definitely aren't small. You could get two meals out of it - I didn't, partially because I didn't like it enough to pack it up for the trek home.
I liked it. I did not love it. If I were in the area, I would give it serious consideration. Would I make a trip there? No.
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