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https://www.facebook.com/pages/Trattoria-Cyklop-Kraków-Kazimierz/1415998745313531For those of you who are interested in reading only my restaurant reviews you may, with a clear conscience, skip the next couple of paragraphs.
Another year, another birthday. This time around it was as if the planets had aligned. First, my birthday fell on a Saturday and it was the Eurovision Song Contest Final too. Oh, deep joy! (Apologies for the pretentious language and faux excitement). My birthday celebrations started on the Friday evening. My real age is a closely guarded secret, known only to a select few. Invariably someone asks me which birthday I'm celebrating and I turn that into a guessing game. I usually fare better in the "guess my age" competition than I would in a "guess my weight" competition. As luck would have it, some of my expat friends still keep the tradition of buying the birthday boy/girl a drink. As a result, it turned out to be quite a boozy night taking in various bars around Kazimierz. I got to bed at around 3am and didn't regain consciousness until 10am. Those seven hours of very low quality sleep left my feeling pretty crappy for the what remained of my birthday.
"There is no such thing as a free lunch," or so the saying goes. Free dinners apparently do exist thank heavens. My friend had generously offered to treat me to a birthday dinner. I can count the number of girls that have done this for me on the fingers of one hand. I got to choose the restaurant too. I opted to go to Cyklop for no better reason than it had been recommended to me by one of my flatmates. There are two Cyklops in Kraków and we chose to go the Kazimierz one as we were going to concert/exhibition opening later that evening.
Why anyone would want to name their restaurant (or indeed two restaurants) after a mythical one-eyed beast is beyond me. But, inside, the restaurant is really nice with various zones to suit your mood. We opted to sit outside in the (covered at the time) patio garden area. There was some minor amusement to be had due to language differences. First my dinner companion asked (in Polish) where the toilet was. The waitress didn't understand initially, but luckily we didn't have to resort to sign language to find out.
When it comes to ordering in Italian restaurants I always stumble over whether to attempt to pronounce names of dishes in Polish or in Italian while wildly gesticulating. The resultant mish-mash of bad pronunciation prompted the waitress to tell us that she speaks English and asked where we are from. Is our Polish that bad that people think we are just holidaymakers here in Kraków? Next, it was the restaurant's turn to provide a few chuckles. The menu listed Green Mild Cider. So we asked for two bottles of Green Mill. The waitress, when reading our order back, two bottles Green Mile Cider.
Our ciders and food soon arrived. I had a rather tasty Spinaci pizza based on the rather flimsy reasoning that it was composed of some of my favourite foodstuffs. Spinach, yum... Bacon, yummy... Fried egg, also yum. Fried egg on pizza is a slightly strange concept. Boiled egg is slightly less strange and I've had it many a time adorning Capricciosa pizzas in various Pizza Expresses back in Blighty. My dinner companion had opted for spinach ravioli. My pizza was good (made in a proper wood-burning pizza oven) and my friend's ravioli also went down well.
The food here at Cyklop is good and tasty, reasonably priced and the service is attentive without being overbearing. Next time, I sample the delights at the other (more pizza orientated) restaurant on Mikołajska in the old town.
