8 Best Restaurants in Centrum, Warsaw

The best Balkan restaurant in Warsaw serves a mix of Croat, Serbian, Bosnian, and Jewish recipes, executed by Serb and Croat chefs. Meat dishes are the menu's core, although Thursday is fish day, and food comes in generous portions. Worthy choices include dimljena vesalica (sirloin smoked with cherrywood and then grilled very slowly), and jareći kotleti (mixed lamb cutlets in herbs). The decor is rustic, and in summer, the garden is one of the best places in town.

The "Polish Home" restaurant is more of a manor, with several patrician, yet cozy, rooms and a conservatory. The service is suitably courteous, the food is equally genteel. Although the Polish recipes are traditional Polish recipes, they aren't as heavy as much of the country's cuisine and minimize the use of fat. Some good examples from the menu are veal liver with baked apple and caramel sauce and sheatfish (catfish) fillet with green pepper and spinach.

Before Toshihiro Fukunaga opened the longest-standing Japanese restaurant in Warsaw (with the longest sushi bar in Europe), he worked in the fashion industry and lived in South America. He moved to Poland in 1990, hoping to promote Polish fashion models in Japan; he ended up promoting sushi, tempura, and noodles to initially reluctant—and now enthusiastic—Poles. The menu is extensive to the point of overwhelming, but whatever you choose, you cannot go wrong.

With a stylish room and some of the best food in the city, this basement restaurant is one of the more popular places to be in Warsaw these days. The tasteful main salon is furnished with antiques and decorated with large bouquets of fresh flowers. You can't go wrong here with the food, especially if you try the homemade pierogi or pike-perch fillet in white-leek sauce. For dessert, the homemade cakes are outstanding.

The fresh and tasty sushi does not come cheap here, as you'll discover when you add up your seemingly inexpensive, individual pieces for a rather large final bill. However, your little bites arrive in fancy little boats in this floating interpretation of the "kaiten-sushi" (conveyor-belt–sushi) restaurant. Watch the chef at work: he definitely knows what he is doing, and it's like watching an artist work as he produces picture-perfect maki and nigiri. You don't even have to bother reading a menu: just grab the plates as they pass; and try to keep a running total in your mind so you are not so surprised when you get a hefty bill.

Sakana has bar seating only.