Albion Polish Club, Albion by Big Fil

A work colleague once of the Polish persuasion but now a dinky di Aussie had long suggested that I check out the Polish Club located in far off Albion – the western Melbourne suburb, not ancient Britain. Given that it’s quite a journey for me it took some time to make it but I finally managed the nearly 2 hour public transport journey from the eastern suburbs to check out this bastion of Eastern European cooking.

First thing to note is that this is not a restaurant, not really. It’s not a cafeteria either but sits somewhere in between. You order from the menu at the register which really does feel a bit school cafeteria like, but the table setting is much nicer than at my school anyway and the food is delivered to your table. This in between arrangement probably reflects that it is not really a public restaurant even if open to the general public but part of a social club (duh, I hear you say but it does mean that the feel of the place is very different to most of the places we visit around town).


My choice for lunch and probably the pick of the day was the roast pork (sometimes it helps having insider knowledge). Originally on the plate it looked smaller than I’d expected but the slices of pork are cut comparatively thick. The meat was juicy, the cabbage slightly vinegary to cut through the richness of the pork and gravy, the potato smooth if not as creamy/buttery as I’d have liked.
 
Sausage and sauerkraut


Cabbage roll

My companions choices for lunch, the cabbage roll and the sausage, both got a positive response but not strong ones. Of the two the cabbage roll was the more positively received, with the sausage nice but not something they would choose again.


On my colleagues recommendation we also ordered a serve of pierogi to share, opting for the potato and cheese. I should preface this with pierogi are not my favourite style of dumpling, being thick skinned and usually with a quite heavy filling, but these left me a little cold. The crunchy topping (apparently fried pork) did provide a textual contrast to the softer dumplings though and was kind of interesting.


There are a limited selection of cakes available, which the day we visited included an apple and a cheesecake. The filling in the apple cake looked fresh and moist but the crust looked a little overdone.


The cheesecake was of the heavy, traditional kind and a little drier and more crumbly than my preference. On the other hand, it too was obviously freshly baked.

Verdict

We liked it.

Cheap eats.

Overall

Our visit to the Polish Club didn’t result in any culinary epiphanies. It was however respectable, home style cooking of a variety you don’t see that often in the Melbourne Asian/Italian/Greek etc restaurant dominated scene. Prices are reasonable and the staff and other guests were friendly (not always the case for obvious blow-ins at some social clubs). While not something we tried the selection of Polish beers also came highly recommended.

Find it at

Albion Polish Club
19 Carrington Drive
Albion VIC 3020
Phone: (03) 9363 3941