Knaypa

With the influx of Polish workers to our shores, you'd expect a flush of new Polish restaurants too. So where are they all? Not so much as a Polish sausage until this one, in the already strongly Polish enclave of Hammersmith's King Street. The ground-floor Knaypa tries to be cool and modern with its neon-lit cocktail bar, big TV screen, bold colours and dodgy soft rock muzak but the result looks more like a hairdressing parlour in Gdansk. The basement is more folksy, with sturdy wooden furniture and low lighting. The starters were great: soured rye flour soup was served in a hollowed-out loaf, 1970s dinner party style. The soup had just the right degree of tang from the rye flour liquid, which is left to ferment for a few days. The morsels of sausage, wild mushroom , quail eggs and marjoram contained in the stock were a treat to discover. The pierogi (boiled dumplings) were also well made, though we weren't so sure that the sun-dried tomato garnish added anything. The starter of three types of herring was also garnished in lavish style, but more appropriately this time, with bright jewels of fish roe. A main course of golabki - cabbage leaves stuffed with minced pork, veal and rice - was stunningly presented, like balls of Christmas pudding topped with fresh dill, the tomato sauce vividly coloured and flavoured. While the core of the cooking is sound, Knaypa is let down by a misplaced desire to make the dishes more 'modern', or more visually appealing, or by the occasional lapse of ingredient quality. The poppyseed cake was a case in point. It didn't taste fresh, and the presentation appeared to have been copied from a 1980s food magazine with its insipid strawberry garnish (in January?) and aerosol cream; very disappointing after such a good start. To drink, we recommend the kvass, a traditional Slavic low-alcohol beverage. But we suspect that merry groups will be more tempted by the huge lager dispensers, which are brought to your table and hold several pints. Polish lagers are gassy and insipid, though, so if that's not to your taste, the list of vodkas is worth a shot or two.

http://www.timeout.com/london/restaurants/12512.html