Pod Samsonem

In Warsaw we ate all our meals in the Old Town or the New Town of the modern city. Both “Old” and “New” are a little misleading when speaking of historic Warsaw: The city was virtually destroyed by the Nazis at the end of WWII—what emerged is a kind of Slavic Los Angeles, a modern and sprawling city of millions. The half-millenium old Old and New Towns,, however, were lovingly and carefully restored—using the rubble from their destruction—by the residents, and are all but indistinguishable from photographs that remain of the city in the 1930s. A regular at the Café Zapatki lovingly referred to this neighborhood of Warsaw (where he lived and worked) as the “theme park” of the city—and it may be, but it’s a vibrant district of a city that doesn’t quite outlive its past.

New Town is separated from the Old Town by a portal in the north section of the reconstructed city wall. Our first meal was here, in a restaurant called Pod Samsonem. Inside, it is bright and spacious, comfortably filling two quiet dining rooms.

We tried two basically Jewish hors d’oeuvres, an Egg and Onion Salad and a “Jewish Caviar”. The former was a delicate combination of the marquis ingredients with little spicing but enough flavor that this was not missed; the latter a brilliant combining of calf’s liver (chicken liver is also commonly used) and chopped eggs—and a not-so-subtle reminder of the trials of the Jews in this great city over the centuries.

The pork roast was the hot course that appeared most appealing on the menu, but I couldn’t bring myself to suffer the irony of ordering it with the Jewish Caviar here at the edge of what had been the Warsaw Ghetto.

For a main course I chose a steak tartare –ground beef, served raw. It’s a dish that in one form or another certainly predates the discovery of fire, though the name is a term in use only 60 years or so.

In the U.S., tartare is usually served seasoned with salt and pepper, onions and capers on the side, and a raw egg settled in an indentation in the top of the meat—all to be mixed in by the diner. In Samsonem’s version the egg and capers were dispensed with, onions and paprika sided on the plate with the beef to be combined according to taste. I thought I would miss the capers and egg, but the ground beef was so lean and flavorful I didn’t think of them after the first bite.