This odd looking cafe / restaurant in the Cultural Quarter (that still makes me laugh) of Hanley has been around a few years now and is billed as serving Czech food although it offers fodder from various ‘EE’ locations (Hungary, Poland etc).

It was cold outside and only slightly less freezing inside and we weren’t exactly warmly greeted; maybe because we were English? A half-smiling waitress waved us to the back of the wooden-panelled building which looked like a giant sauna (only without the heat).

To us Brits, some of the menu was interesting. I opted for a Langos (Hungarian deep-fried dough) but they had run out of them plus a few other items we tried to order. Then I was going to order a breakfast (it looked good on the picture) but decided to be less of a philistine and ordered some foreign muck. 🙂

The toilets were located at the back of the building (which looked like the rear entrance to a knocking-shop) and were dirty, small and needed a desperate refurb. On flushing, it sounded like it was a NASA rocket about to lift-off. When I saw the state of the bog I had fears of what might be lurking in the kitchen…

Still we had already ordered. My partner ordered sauerkraut soup (which she liked but I thought it was meh) with came with some semi-stale bread. I waited eons for mine. We told the waitress we wanted the food to come all together but maybe we should have spoken in Polish. No one told us the food would take about a year to come and there was no apology. Maybe that’s a cultural thing but when in England…

After several months, something arrived but it wasn’t worth the wait. The food was sheep’s cheese and potato dumplings in a sort of semolina splat; it was a bit grim and looked like the plate had been to a bukkake party. This delight was accompanied by some incinerated smoked sausage and bacon that was so burned I thought it had passed through Chernobyl on the way from the kitchen.

The decor apart from the wood, it is quite dull wall-wise with just odd pics of ibexes (if indices is the plural of index, is ibices the plural or ibix?), mountain scenes and wagon wheels with cobwebbed (not a Halloween effect, just dirty) lamps dotted about. Vinyl flooring and wooden semi-comfortable chairs. Red embroidered hearts adorned the tables though they should have given the punters a 1000 piece jigsaw to while away the time. There is also a large TV with EE shows on to presumably distract from the speedy service.

Whoever the owner Pete is, we didn’t see him; he is probably dead; starved to death or eaten his own food.

Verdict: 1.5 /5

Good: Erm…

Bad: Have a sit down, this could take a while…