Before heading home, we had dinner at Czerwone Jabłuszko (Red Apple).
It's an all-you-can-eat Polish buffet and I feared that I would lapse into a food coma while driving home on the Interstate. Since I am writing this, you know I avoided that fate.
The front of the house staff were all Polish women but luckily everyone seemed to be bilingual which was a big plus since the only Polish I know is "Tak" and "Dziekuje". The waitstaff were dressed in what looked like faux Polish peasant dresses.
They bill their coffee as the best in town. It wasn't all that but was certainly better than at most buffets. The waitress started us off with a choice of soup: chicken noodle or mushroom. I went with the former and The D with the latter. I was impressed. The broth wasn't made from prison base and had a goodly amount of kluski floating in it. The report on the mushroom soup was that it was mediocre. Tasted like canned mushrooms.
While other buffets have more square feet of buffet than Czerwone Jabłuszko, they made good use of the more than adequate space they had. Pierogi, blintzes, goblaki, roast chicken quarters, fried chicken, whole roasted turkey(?) you slice yourself, a ham for your slicing pleasure, and roast duck. Boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, potato pancakes. Beef rolls, schnitzel, lamb, kielbasa...and so on. Here's my first plate:
That's meat pierogi, a potato pancake, beef tongue in horseradish sauce, sauerkraut, and a boiled potato. The tongue was very tender. The sauce could have used a bit more horseradish for my taste but I love the stuff. Unfortunately they only had 2 kinds of pierogi available, meat and strawberry. But I guess I can't complain since it's been a long time since I've had decent pierogi.
My second plate:
The cucumber salad was great. Next to it is a sweet cabbage salad made with oranges. Underneath that cheese blintz is a three or four bean salad. The big hoolie is a breaded pork cutlet while the smaller lump was billed as "schnitzel". The cutlet wasn't seasoned very much so I gave it a good dollop of pepper and lots or lemon juice. On the other hand, the wienerschnitzel was very well seasoned. It had salt and pepper and probably garlic and another seasoning I couldn't identify although it was familiar.
The D loves beets and she had them fried and pickled. Here's a bit of the latter still left on one of her plates:
There's also a piece of fried fish as well as some cucumber and tomato salads.
While the buffet was heavy on the flesh and starch, the salad bar was no slouch. In addition to the ones above, there was potato salad, cole slaw, a creamy pasta salad, and more that I cannot recall. I didn't have a lettuce salad but there were plenty of vegetables to be had for one. But I suppose even the salad bar had to have meat as I spied something that looked like Leberkäse.
I wondered if Polish buffets had chocolate pudding from a #10 can like Chinese buffets do and I can report that they do. And there was a goodly selection of fruit as well. (Plus ambrosia.)
For dessert our waitress offered ice cream: vanilla or vanilla with a chocolate swirl. The D got the plain variety and she also grabbed a couple slices of cake. The ice cream was serviceable. I sampled the cheesecake and it was very good. Polish cheesecakes tend not to be slices of solid cheese but rather have it mixed into a batter. It's still very light with the creaminess of the cheese sitting side by side with the fluffiness of the cake.
Despite the odd misstep, the food was very good. I'd been hankering for Polish food and it was nice to be able to sample a bit of this and a slice of that instead of committing myself to a particular dish. It reminded me that I should cook with dill more often. I also appreciated that there wasn't much in the way of concessions to American food. All I can recall is a pan of BBQ ribs.
It is $14.99 for dinner on weekends and there is a full bar.
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