A new restaurant that offers the comfort food that has made Polish cuisine so popular around the world has just opened in downtown Penticton.
The Polish Bistro opened on Wednesday and new owner Walter Hrynkiewicz and his wife Alicja are confident their new restaurant will enjoy great success.
The new Polish Bistro is located at 65 Nanaimo Avenue East, right next door to the new Brexit British Pub that opened several weeks ago.
He and his family had spent many years in Thunder Bay, Ont., but were looking to move to a warmer climate and had looked in Osoyoos and other locations in the Okanagan Valley, but instantly fell in love with Penticton and all it has to offer during a couple of visits over the past winter, he said.
“We came as a family in the middle of January,” he said. “We found this location in the downtown and then we’ve spent over five months completely renovating the facility here.
“There’s some nice pictures inside showing off the best of Poland. With our food, we try to offer all the old-fashioned meals. We’ll be offering popular items like perogies, cabbage rolls and borscht. That’s the triangle of popular Polish food that our whole menu rolls around.
“Right now we have six types of perogies. One of them, we came up with something we’ve never done before, which includes spinach, sun-dried tomatoes and feta cheese. That’s new in our family and we think people will really enjoy that.
“Other perogy flavours include cheddar cheese, pork, sauerkraut, beef perogies and we offer different mixtures of them.”
The main focus in the opening days is on serving a lunch crowd, but there will be much more attention paid to expanding the dinner menu in the coming weeks, said Hrynkiewicz.
The Polish Bistro is going to be open Monday to Saturday from 11:30 a.m. until 8 p.m. to begin with, but those hours may expand if warranted, he said.
Their Polish restaurant in Thunder Bay, “which is a smaller version than this one” was a big success, but his wife wanted to live in a warmer climate, in part due to a medical condition and to get away from the bitter Northern Ontario winters, he said.
“We spent a year and a half actually from the time from the concept of moving from Thunder Bay and looking to move elsewhere to B.C.,” he said. “We found Penticton. We came here and we really liked the city, especially my wife. The climate made a big difference for health reasons for her.”
They did look at moving to Osoyoos and then Kelowna, however, he and his wife both preferred Penticton because it’s a small city blessed with endless amenities, but not a bustling bigger city like Kelowna, which is bigger than Thunder Bay, he said.
“We think the city is the right size for us a family,” he said. “When my wife came to Penticton for the first time, her first impression was this place is exactly what she was looking for. She’s very happy here and so is the family.”
It was very heartening to see a good crowd walk through the doors when the restaurant opened its doors to the public for the first time Wednesday, he said.
“It was quite busy,” he said. “As a new business, you always have some challenges and we’re getting used to a few technical things that didn’t work as we expected, but we did what we could.
“The customers have been very enthusiastic and supportive. They knew it was our first day and nothing is perfect when you open. But the place was busy for lunch and we were quite surprised for dinner because we had a steady flow as well.”
In the five months they have called Penticton home, they have discovered there is a small Polish community and many were out to eat at the bistro on Wednesday and Thursday, he said.
“We found out there is a small Polish community of maybe 50 to 100 people living here,” he said. “I would say maybe 12 to 15 from Poland have already been in to eat and the circle is going to grow as we become known and some people will come out just because of our relationships and us being Polish.
“I do know that the vast majority of our customers are Canadians who are hungry for good food.”
Everything on the menu is fresh and nothing prepared will be frozen, he said.
“Everything is freshly made and we adjust the volume of production to what we have on a daily basis,” he said.
His wife’s perogies were mentioned in a show on the Canadian Food Network and her borscht was recognized as the best in Thunder Bay, he said.
“Our borscht will be a staple for us. We only have one soup, but we guarantee it will be one of the best soups you can have.”
