About three years ago, when out of necessity I found myself in Warsaw, by mere accident I got into a restaurant located on the outskirts of a park. I don’t remember whether the star was already on top of it or no, but the restaurant itself was indeed and very much what one calls “memorable”™ and during all my next visits to Poland I always wanted to get there again. But I would never call them early enough. Booking a month in advance:

“Sorry, all weekends are reserved till November!”

That’s what they cheerfully told me in May. Ok, then it should be Monday. And, finally, two months before the other supposed one-day visit to Warsaw, I did manage to squeeze into the booking.

I was going there by taxi, watching the buildings with columns sweeping by. I was sort of getting nervous: hardly ever something engraves in my memory that indelibly. But this restaurant did. And what if it spoiled?

We come in.

Oh, well. It’s clear/understandable why you can’t book it a month in advance. It resembled a skating rink ticket booth back then and it remains so today. They can have maximum 30 people per night there. There’re more staff than guests in the frame. And one table is good for only one dinner. The “very good business” title has nothing to do with them.

We sit down.

They bring us the menu with the “moments” – that’s the name of the dishes.

Actually, a long time ago I worked out for myself a very simple model: complements determine the quality of the restaurant. If they are fucking way too elaborate and not really delicious, further on everything’s going be the same. Yet it happens sometimes that appetizers or main dishes turn out to be quite good, but it can be revealed only during a long dinner.

In this case, everything was good.

The menu absorbs the overall mood: orange milk mushrooms/milk/cabbage, aubergine/halva/bird cherry, beans/lavender/hare’s kidneys – there’re only 9 items. And there’re 6 complements according to the same principle.

The menu’s called the 42^nd week. It’s gradually being updated during the year: week after week, 6 times a year.

It’s the very first dish: flounder tartare with rowanberry, sea-buckthorn viscous mousse and grated beeswax on top like truffle – that dispels any thoughts that it’s possible to get here without a reservation one or even two months in advance during the next year.

It’s extremely talented, quiet and without much ado. The service is perfect at… 110eur!

For the entire two and half hours you bite off taste after taste, crunch and creamily flow in textures: it’s cold, then hot, then gradient; all this is endowed by some excellent accompaniment, mostly white wine that is generally little known: Hungarian, Slovenian, Slovakian, and even Polish… So, you completely forget that you’re in Warsaw, which isn’t at all famous for its gastronomy, to put it mildly.