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Fatherland Restaurant450 South Main St. New Britain 06051 860-224-3345 By STEVE & LISA ALCAZARI Hartford Advocate Published: 8/5/05 You couldn't exactly call it the ideal weather for Polish food. As temperatures creep up into the 90s, most people start thinking about salads and other lighter fare. But my appetite sometimes gets contrary. Maybe it's because of all the time spent in the air conditioning; maybe my body gets tricked into thinking it's winter, time to bulk up, or maybe I simply don't like doing without my pierogies for too long, but whatever it was, I was ready for a hefty nap-inducing lunch of Polish food last week when Lisa and I decided to return to New Britain, site of many a good Eastern European meal in the past. New Britain is lucky -- they've got festive Polish food and family-style Polish food, and just regular old Polish food. Fatherland is more on the family-style side. Set in a tiny strip mall, Fatherland doesn't look like much from outside. There are interesting touches inside, though. The foyer has sort of a mini Polish Hall of Fame gallery, with framed portraits of Pope John Paul II, Copernicus, Chopin and other noteworthy Poles. The dining area is one big, open room painted red, with numerous tables, a small counter at the back and a view into the kitchen. Several black sketch-like scenes of famous Polish cities are painted onto the walls near the tables; one rarely has cause to say this about original art in restaurants, but the paintings really are nicely done, in a studied, almost 19th-century manner. Some quirky (Polish?) yodeling played on the stereo. Nice touch, that. There are daily soup specials at Fatherland, and I was kicking myself that it wasn't Thursday, which is when the restaurant serves a tantalizing-sounding sorrel soup. It was tomato soup day. The soup was creamy, dotted with little beads of oil floating on the surface and stocked with macaroni. We also enjoyed cold and refreshing bottles of Zywieck, one of many Polish beers served. Poland, as you may know, has a noble beer-brewing heritage. Zywieck is a very light, crisp and effervescent pilsner. I found it to be sweet and yeasty, almost doughy in flavor. There were about two dozen lunch specials, all but two of which cost $6.25. The specials included combinations of potato pancakes, stuffed cabbage, pierogies with different stuffing, nalesniki (cheese-stuffed blintzes), krokiey (blintzes stuffed with sauerkraut), dumplings, goulash, meatloaf, spareribs, kielbasa, liver, pork chops fried fish and more. All of the specials include a side -- your choice of pickled beets, red cabbage, sliced cucumbers with sour cream, or cole slaw. About half of the specials come with a scoop of mashed potatoes. Lisa ordered the pierogi stuffed with potato and cheese with a side of cole slaw. I had the bigos , a stew made of cooked sauerkraut, pieces of meat and kielbasa, and a side of the pickled beets. If you don't go in for sauerkraut and kielbasa, you probably won't be a fan of the bigos, but don't write it off entirely, the stew has a surprising sweetness, with a little hint of tomato and some bay leaf. And the kielbasa in New Britain seems to be smokier and all-around better than what you get elsewhere. Slightly dry mashed potatoes sprinkled with chopped parsley served as a nice absorbent medium with which to sop up the juices from the stew. Pickled beets, largely unadorned, had a pleasant robust flavor. Soft, perhaps a little mushy, and filling, Lisa's pierogies were topped with mild and slightly sweet sauteed onions. A dunk in the little ramekin of apple sauce didn't hurt the flavor. The cole slaw was uninteresting. We finished the meal off with weak cups of coffee (not recommended) and a batch of one of the house specials, strawberry pierogies (recommended). Map | Printer-Friendly Page | Email to a Friend
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