Thursday, Friday or Saturday evening. An evening off. No child. “Going out”. It’s amazing how can you value such a simple evening off when you’re a parent. First, short negotiations with grandparents or some arrangements with a babysitter and then – the world is yours! 🙂 A careless meeting out in the evening, friends, wine, delicious food. First – dinner! Then, party all night long! I love it! I still feel as excited before hitting the city as I did years ago. Back then it was a before party at my friend’s house or somewhere in the hood… places you won’t forget. Insiders still remember what “kryta” was (tribunes of the Marymont district stadium)… then the city centre, a club, a party. After 13-15 years the evening/night often ends the same way. We found out about that last Friday evening… or rather Saturday morning. One thing is for sure an evening out starts different nowadays – preferably with a dinner in some cool place!
This time we started with Bibenda on ul. Nowogrodzka 10. A place that we wanted to visit for a while since we heard good things about it and wanted to check how it really is. We’re here at 8 pm. It’s Thursday, the place is crowded, some organised parties at two large tables – loud, even more crowded with waiters running around like mad. We sit at the table we booked before (thank God) and start to look for our dinner. Menu is neither too short nor too long. Meals are original with detailed information about the origins and suppliers of products used in Bibenda. In accordance with our favourite para picarrule, we choose several starters and main courses which we plan to eat together, the four of us, nibbling from each other’s plates. We order wine and wait. We wait a bit more. Some more waiting… Too long. They didn’t even bring us the wine. Or water. As we look around the room, we realise that the staff is having problems in containing the situation at the remaining tables too with a party for approx. 30 people going on at the same time. Well, they could’ve told us when they took our order.
After quite some time we get courgette flowers with basil and mint goat’s cheese (PLN 21), that were theoretically supposed to come with grilled tomato and rucola. Suddenly the tomato transformed into a partially burned aubergine. The flowers are pleasantly crispy, the filling is alright but we still remember courgette flowers with aubergine mousse from Ale Wino which are really hard to knock down from the throne!
From hot starters white sausage with lentils, courgettes and marinated red onion is a bit dull. Nothing special: sausage and lentils with not much of a connection, a few bits of aubergine, just a little bit of marinated onion.
courgette flowers with basil and mint goat’s cheese with grilled tomato and rucola – PLN 21
white sausage with lentils, courgettes and marinated red onion and dijon – PLN 14
Hummus is still missing in action, which is a bit surprising since it should come first. But we keep on waiting as we get the main courses. To be honest, there’s not much of a difference between starters and main courses in Bibenda – when it comes to size, main courses aren’t much bigger.
Green beans with mushrooms, grilled tomatoes and Mazuriano cheese (PLN 25) turns out to be the best shot. Great combination of flavours and texture. Crispy beans, soft and melting mushrooms, delicious cheese flavour. Perfect. Unfortunately we are unable to have a second helping – the green beans are gone. Merguez sausages with vegetables are quite tasty too. Beans again, tasty sauce, delicate, well grilled sausages. Corn with goat’s cheese, lime and coriander (PLN 11) is far from spectacular though since you can hardly taste the additions that were supposed to make it a special meal (goat’s cheese!).
Due to the lack of beans, we order some grilled vegetables with aubergine puree and tahini. We also finally get our hummus with vegetables, olive oil and zatar. It’s all tasty, but neither hummus nor the vegetables blow our minds.
green beans with wild mushrooms, grilled tomato thyme and Mazuriano cheese from Ranczo Frontiera
sides – baked corn with goat’s cheese, coriander and lime – PLN 11
sides – fresh grilled vegetables, aubergine puree, tahini – PLN 11
In the end, we order desserts, even though they seem a bit monotonous (I think the waiter realises that as well when he says what’s on the menu ;)) – meringue with mascarpone, hazelnuts and fruits (PLN 16) and a tart with… mascarpone and fruits. Desserts are alright, tasty but again – there’s nothing special about them. They lack originality.
meringue with mascarpone, fruits and hazelnuts – PLN
tart of a day
Bibenda is a pleasant and lively place where you can drink some wine with friends in the evening, sit down and chat, have a snack. If you’re more into culinary adventures, I would choose a different place. You can find some delicious things here (I would happily eat green beans with mushrooms and cheese again!), but some dishes are a bit dull. It was cool to try it but there are better places for wine and dinner in Warsaw 🙂
PRACTICAL INFORMATION:
ul. Nowogrodzka 10 (near Krucza)
tel: 502 77 03 03
email: bibenda@bibenda.pl
opening hours:
Tue – Sat 12.00 –
Sunday 12.00 – 22.00
closed on Monday
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