Karczma Góraleczka — Restaurant in Zakopane

Short review: Best food I have ever tasted! Lovely atmosphere True Polish dishes, but kids can also eat well. Little corner for kids to play, nothing dangerous I noticed. Live music, adjusted to the people's wishes! You can eat cheap, or expensive, and you'll be full either way! There is no tip included in the bill, you can tip the staff by giving them cash, as much as you want for the service. The menu is translated in 3 languages, also in hungarian and it is avilable via QR codes. The menus are not translated poorly they are very accurate. Parking is not far away, aprox. 2 minutes away (400 m) through Fashion street, there is a large parking lot, with parking fee of 7 zł/hour on weekdays 'til 9 PM. For disabled people this restaurant is packed with seats on the ground floor, but no toilet. Toilet is only available upstairs. The toilets are clean, and well equipped. The mulled beer, and garlic soups are the top favorite, a must try! Also the pancakes are very very delicious! Basically everything is delish.

Longer review: I've been to this restaurant 7 years ago, and remembered that the soups are amazing. I forgot the name of the place, and how it looked like, so we just wandered around the street, and stumbled upon this restaurant with great atmosphere inside. Just after we sat down, my sister sent me the picture from 7 years ago. It was the exact same restaurant!! So not only I remembered, but accidentally fell in love with the place twice🥰🥰🥰 And just as I remembered, the Garlic Soup is the best soup in the whole world. It was served with cheese toast, and plenty of bacons inside the soup, very delicious! The food was still hot, and we didn't wait for the food, only about 15 minutes, each time we ate there. Because yes, we ate there 3 times, everyday, throughout our stay in Zakopane. Our waitress Karolina and waiter Jurek was the best! They were always smiley, and fulfilled any request we had. We will be regulars that...

Unfortunately our experience at this restaurant was very poor and the lack of proper behaviour towards the customers totally destroyed any pleasure we would have from the food.

We came at rush hour and had to wait for a few minutes outside of the restaurant, this is totally fine and I would not event mention this if the man responsible for seating spoke any English and didn’t have the look on his face saying why are you even here and don’t you dare ask me anything and not here for you. After getting directions where to sit, of course in polish, we were seated at a table near the door with cold wind blowing on our backs.

I asked to be reseated and was allowed to but at it was still unbearably cold on the ground floor due to the opened doors.

After we were seated a very obviously drunk writer came to take our order. It was clear he was drunk as they were drinking with 2 young girls sitting next to us. I don’t mind them having one or two shots, just don’t get too drunk while working. We ordered: 2 fruit tees with shot of cherry liquor 2 starters - bryndzove halusky 2 soups - cabbage and garlic soup

You would expect to receive the food in this order but no no no. We first received the soups, after that the starters and after that just 2 cherry liquors without tee. After asking for the tee they brought us black one, after that I asked to get the fruit one and they gave me a very “nice” response or “tee like tee” and rolled their eyes on us.

As for the food itself, the soups were great but the halusky were very poorly made, just plain dumplings with a blob of bryndza on them (I can assure you this is not how they are supposed to be served). They tasted good but the presentation was not so great.

I would strongly recommend choosing another restaurant if you don’t want to be...

Rating: 5/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Victoria’s thoughts: Being at this restaurant felt so homey and cozy to me, there was live music and it was decorated beautifully. The menu was extensive and had all kinds of traditional Polish food. The price was extremely reasonable for the amount of food that we ordered and we got very large portions.

Jasper's thoughts: Brother, I love this restaurant. You get so much food for the amount you spend and the food is amazing. And dont even get me started on atmosphere cause it looks so cozy and warm. I used to love going to these restaurants when I was a kid (when we went on trips to zakopane), so the nostalgia factor is high for me and they are definitely in my top 5 if not top 3 of all time. Lastly, Tori could not stop looking at my golonka (pork knuckle) that we had to get another one in krakow later. She was drooling. Would 100% go again!

Overall thoughts: 💭

This restaurant was a great way to end our day trip to Zakopane. We each ordered an entree, shared a soup, and had 2 cokes and the total was around €36. Service was a bit meh, the waitresses were slow to seat us and ask us to order and I think if Jasper couldn’t speak Polish, we would’ve had a much harder time ordering and enjoying our experience. After ordering the food came very...