Gdansk – Whiskey in the Jar
Whiskey in the Jar is a chain of American style restaurants in Poland, and when Richard was in Warsaw a few weeks ago, we went to their relatively new location there. This branch of the chain is also relatively new, on a redeveloped site on Granary Island in Gdansk, by the Motława River.
The entrance to the restaurant and when a staff member came over she asked if I wanted to sit outside or inside. I was slightly puzzled by this as I couldn’t imagine anyone would want to sit outside, but it transpires that there’s a separate area which overlooks the river that is outside the main building but still fully covered. I was quite content with the large table offered in this section of the restaurant, with its quite bold colours. The menu is accessed by a QR code and then a staff member comes over to take the order, that was all clearly explained by the staff member.
The beer selection isn’t sparkling to say the least, but Lech is a perfectly reasonable lager as far as they go (and I went to the Lech brewery in Poznań a few years ago and they gave me a free bottle opener which is impacting my views here). The drink size is the 500ml and it is poured correctly, although it looks like an under-pour from this photo.
The burger itself isn’t particularly visible here as it’s hidden by salad detritus, but this is the spicy BBQ burger. Quite a chunky burger which was meaty in taste (sounds obvious, but it’s possible to have bland and tasteless burgers) and it was quite fiddly to remove the knife that they’ve stabbed it with. Pickles and onion added some texture, with the burger perhaps being more medium well than the medium they said, but I can live with that. The restaurant specialise in steaks and although that’s not really my thing, the reviews of them are high judging from comments on-line.
The whole arrangement is on-trend, clean and informal, with the staff being pro-active and friendly. Although they seemed slightly short of tables as it was a busy Saturday afternoon, they never hurried me out and it was all quite comfortable. The music wasn’t too loud (although they have live music in the evenings, when it might be a bit much for my own personal ideal) and the food was brought out after around eight minutes, which is prompt and convenient given that I was hungry. I expect that there will be more openings of this restaurant in Poland, as they’re well reviewed and seemingly generally very busy, so they’re doing something right.
