Restauracja pod Gruszką — Restaurant in Krakow

Literally stumbled onto this very charming and romantic restaurant right on the corner of the Great Square of Krakow. You feel transported back in time. The decorations are classic and beautiful.

We were offered a table with a great view of the square. The server lit a candle and had great advice on the order. She spoke excellent English. My wife asked for the server to make a "special martini". She did, it had a dried pear in it and was excellent in taste and presentation. Strong, but not overpowering off all the other flavors.

Our meal was awesome! Honestly, I am an American and don't remember the name of our appetizer of my wife's dish. My wife is a great cook and was so impressed with her dish she spent a lot of the meal talking about how she could recreate the dish at home. It was some kind of dumpling, pumpkin thing with mushrooms. Which I am not doing justice with that description because it had a lot of flavor and a touch of spice and paprika? The mushrooms we did not recognize and don't know if we can find them in the US.

I had fish, that was baked and super tasty. It was trout and I told the server it tasted better than the trout at some big fish restaurant in Gdansk. That was good, but this was better with these spices and herbs they put inside the fish. It was literally melt in the mouth. The side was potatoes and dill which were fantastic and homemade. How do I know? They were just like the potatoes my Polish wife makes for me!

It felt like we had our own little secret hideaway from the hustle and bustle of the square. Been there and done that on the restaurant tents of the square and this just seemed special.

I very rarely rate anything including restaurants. I took the time to do this because it is truly a special place, that is a little tucked away, and easy to overlook. It should not...

Had a reservation of 8 people, firstly I greatly appreciate the staff allowing me to store a birthday cake in their fridge and serving it to us. But unfortunately the experience was ruined by poor quality food several diners did not finish their meal (despite tiny portion size). In my case they forgot about my meal and then gave a small discount as compensation after an hour of waiting after everyone had already eaten. The food when it did arrive was awful.

They also forgot a coffee but added it to the bill and we had to ask multiple times for a liter of wine to share. We would have ordered more had it been easier to do so.

There was some event on and it was clear they should have closed the restaurant to non attendees as they clearly couldn't deal with the workload and they clearly prioritized the event attendees.

Unfortunately I can't recommend...

A wonderful authentic Polish restaurant serving amazing traditional food in beautiful and refined surroundings. Well worth a visit. The quality of the dishes sampled was excellent and the service was truly out of this world putting most of the London restaurants I am familiar with to shame. As a group of tourists we ate here twice and found the food to be tremendous. The staff literally could not do enough for us and provided local information and took the time to show us the beautiful internal architecture in other unused parts of the restaurant. If you are interested in sampling the local cuisine I would highly recommend you coming here. We had 3 courses, beer and some vodka for less than £40 (200zl) a head which was amazing value. Vegetarian options were also very good. Cannot recommend...