Looking for authentic Polish food in Sydney? The Polish Club in Ashfield serves one of the city's biggest and most impressive feast platters loaded with crispy pork knuckles, schnitzels, pierogi, sausages, cabbage rolls and more. Add beetroot soup, langos, potato pancakes and traditional Polish desserts for an incredible meal!
It's a cold, wet and rainy night when Mr NQN and I meet Laura and LimaLimaDelta at the Polish Club on Liverpool Street in Ashfield. The Polish Club opened in 1967 and was built and financed by its 208 founding members. They arrived in Australia with their families as former soldiers of the Polish Armed Forces after World War II in 1947. Sydney currently has two Polish clubs but the Ashfield one has an item that we had been waiting to try.
The elevator from the carpark opens up onto the reception area where you sign in. To the left is the Polka Cafe Deli and shop that stocks a huge range of Polish food and drink from chocolate, cookies, cheeses, meats, cakes, drinks, soup and frozen pierogi.
The woman behind the counter is very friendly and helpful and makes recommendations. We end up buying some cakes and Laura buys pierogi with borscht that they keep cold for us until we finish dinner (the shop closes at 9-10pm).
We walk past the bar and through to Sto Lat restaurant. The whole club looks like it has recently been refurbished and there's a long modern fireplace and comfortable chairs. Sto Lat translates to "one hundred years" and is used at birthday celebrations as a toast for well wishes.
It's mostly full this Sunday evening. The menu is huge and there's a huge range of drinks to get through including a whole page of Polish vodkas. We decide to try a few vodka shots from cherry, mixed nuts and coffee that are all true to flavour. LimaLimaDelta chooses a Polish beer.
We also try some of their cocktails. The Slona Krowka is made with Krupnik Liqueur Stony salted caramel, Wyborowa vodka, warm milk, cinnamon and salted caramel sauce and is like Baileys creamy style cocktail. It's a big hit with the boys. I really enjoy the Slodko Gorzko made with Krupnik Old Liqueur Pikantny Miód or spicy honey with lemon juice, honey syrup and bitters with a chilli lime rim that gives it a really nice freshness to it.
We are not waiting long before the food arrives. Laura and I love Barszcz or beetroot soup which is a Polish version of the more well known borscht. This one has less vegetables than borscht but the broth has an earthy sweetness to it from the beetroot and contains two "Uszka" or Polish dumplings that are shaped like ears that are traditionally served on Christmas Eve.
The other item to arrive is the Langos aka deep fried Hungarian garlic bread, served with sour cream on the side. I absolutely love langos and its resolutely garlicky flavour and chewy textured fried dough. This is actually part of the platter that we ordered (and the reason why we came here).
The item that brought us here is the King's Family Feast Platter. It's said to serve 4 but we all start to wonder if it is 4 members of the Polish Armed Forces after battle because it is enormous and I'd say that it could feed at least 6 people.
On the platter are two huge crispy pork knuckles, 4 large escalopes of chicken and pork schnitzel, two types of Polish sausages, homemade pierogi in two flavours, cabbage rolls, red cabbage, sauerkraut, gravy, mustard, crispy bacon potatoes and house salads.
I even found a slice of undocumented roast pork in there hiding under everything! Everything on this platter is cooked perfectly from the fall apart pork knuckle to the juicy sausages and the crispy, juicy schnitzels. And out of the sauces, we all adore the mushroom sauce that is a powerhouse of flavour - so much so that we ordered two extra pots of it (they're tiny pots). The salads are fresh and refreshing and go perfectly with the meat; the standouts being the sauerkraut, red cabbage and beetroot salad. There's no way that we can finish the platter, even if we hadn't had the other dishes but it is everything that we had hoped for and more.
I adore any sort of potato pancake and the version here comes as four crisp and golden pan fried potato pancakes served with sour cream and a house salad. You can add smoked salmon, goulash and mushroom sauce and we go for the goulash and mushroom sauce. Unfortunately the only thing we didn't enjoy was the goulash as the meat was very chewy but we loved this with sour cream and that fantastic mushroom sauce.
They do say that dessert involves a second stomach and after we packed up all of the platter that we couldn't eat (epic leftovers by the way!) we delve into the dessert. The first is a Warsaw cheese and cherry strudel filled with sweet cream cheese and sour cherries and served with a Kirsch vanilla anglaise, candied walnuts and whipped cream. The thin filo style strudel pastry is delicious, especially the caramelised parts with the sugar baked in.
Everyone loves the crepes and there's a playful yet polite dance between Mr NQN and LimaLimaDelta about who eats the last bite. The crepes are thin and filled with vanilla sweet curd cheese and topped with raspberry sauce and served with vanilla ice cream.
Pear Roulade $8.50
The next day is a treat with delicious leftovers plus the two cakes that we had bought the night before. The pear roulade is nice and creamy although it is quite mildly flavoured.
While the honey and walnut cake is tasty and has a sweet, lightly nutty flavour.
So tell me Dear Reader, have you ever ordered anything like a King's Platter before? Do you like visit country clubs?
This meal was independently paid for.
Polish Club
182 Liverpool Rd, Ashfield NSW 2131
Phone: (02) 9798 7469
Open Wednesday – Sunday 5:00pm-9:00pm (dinner)
Friday, Saturday and Sunday 12:00pm-3:00pm (lunch)
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