POLISHED

Isn’t this fantastic?  Isn’t this what all restaurant bills should look like?  Four simple statements: pig troters (sic), rabbit, duck, bottle of red. Isn’t it also, arguably, what all meals should be like?

The trotters were in aspic – the blandness of the aspic and the intense porkinesss were a winner, especially since it came with a little jug of vinegar:

The duck looked like this, it’s stuffed with apples, and you can’t lose with that can you?:

The rabbit was in mustard sauce and was good too, but not very photogenic, and though not as good as the duck, and I did have some food envy.

This was all, as you can see from the bill, at the Daquise, a Polish restaurant in Thurloe Street, South Kensington, and I realize I’ve been going there for a very long time. Although since the restaurant has been in business since 1947 there must be people who’ve been going there much longer than I have.   

Below is how the Daquise looked it in 1970 – two doors away from a Wimpy Bar – and it’s survived much longer.  Sometimes (if not all that often) there is justice in the food world.

There was, apparently a very serious fire there in 2005 but the place been restored in order to look very much the way it always did – and the menu has been gently updated without making you think it’s getting fancy.  There’s still borscht and black pudding, but I remember I always used to order the stuffed cabbage and that seems to have gone from the menu.