Another place, we were looking forward to visit, former Manekin creperie. However, not everything turned out to be so perfect, how would we like to describe it to you.
Manekin is a chain restaurant, originally established in Toruń. Currently, this restaurant can also be found in Bydgoszcz, Gdansk, Lodz, Opole, Poznań and Warsaw, You can find their exact addresses here: www.manekin.pl. What is important, the standards and taste of food are the same in all cities, even though the menu is slightly different (and unfortunately this is not always confirmed in the case of chain stores).
Gdańsk Manekin is located at al. Grunwaldzka 270, right next to the building of the University of Gdańsk. And that usually means an unmerciful crowd, though there is a lot of space in this tabernacle. This is all because, that in today's era of high restaurant prices, Manekin offers almost canteen prices for exceptionally filling meals. Often in the evening there is a problem with finding a place, much less about lunchtime, when there are lines of customers at the door, waiting, until the waitress shows them a free table. For the same reason, we do not have too many photos illustrating the interior of the restaurant for you. Large spaces are characteristic of the decor, wood and old-fashioned lamps. We arrived at the premises on the opening day, after almost two months of renovation, though hand on heart we must admit, that we did not notice any changes in appearance. The menu mainly includes various types of pancakes: dry, including baked, sweet, American pancakes and soups and salads.
Dominik: I confirm the information about the queues and terrifying crowds. And indeed, It was not really possible to take photos of the place because of it. I do not like, when I am photographed by strangers (what if they are bloggers, who will throw my photo into the air without my consent) and I try not to do it myself, unless I have permission to do so (we got one, for example. in the case of photos of the Abraham Restaurant, but even then we only captured the waiter, avoiding photographing the rest of the staff and visitors).
We started our visit by choosing beverages: Dominik ordered a Coke, and I have a fruit cocktail. I just got a cherry one, because the restaurant offers a different taste every day. It was delicious, made, seems to, on yogurt or buttermilk, with added sugar. Unfortunately, it was probably ordinary sugar, not vanilla, a pity, because this aftertaste with cherries would suit very well.
The soups went first: boletus cream at Dominik's, and I have potato cream. Very tasty and delicate. Fried bacon with onion and parsley are sprinkled in the center of the plate. And here I grimaced, because I don't like a single one, nor the second. OK, the bacon goes perfectly with the potatoes, giving them a very pleasant aftertaste (which itself does not bother me, on the contrary), forcing myself a little, I ate some of it, making the dish more pronounced in taste. I can complain about this bacon, but without it it would be much less tasty. I sincerely hate parsley, maybe next time I can ask you to exchange it for dill? Which, by the way, love for a change; mom always laughs at me, that I eat dill with potatoes.
Dominik: My boletus cream was not very creamy and I would rather describe it as a thick soup, but for me it's just a plus. It is true that I always wonder when tasting mushroom soup, how many worms were found in it (let's not be charmed: no one sticks to worms when selling boletus, because he would go bankrupt throwing half the mushrooms away), but that's the charm of buying anything containing wild mushrooms. The soup was tasty, delicate and with a pleasant aftertaste characteristic of forest mushrooms. But the most interesting thing is this, that the boletus cream was served to me in a hollow loaf of bread, deliciously fragrant and with a crispy crust. Of course, I ate half of the "dish". I have good news for fans of the sour rye soup: in Mannequin, this soup is also served in bread.
Both soups were very filling, so if you come to the Mannequin without being hungry for wolves, you can safely stop at them.
The pancakes were next, the flagship dishes of this restaurant. The pancake I ordered À la tortilla with crispy chicken he was from the Primavera group, that is, pancakes, topped with iceberg lettuce and tomatoes in olive oil with basil, both inside the pancake, and placed on top of it. Apart from them, he was also inside, what could be expected from the name, breaded chicken, red onion and mayonnaise sauce. Each pancake also comes with one of the many dips, I chose the cheese one. The entire dish was delicious, I have absolutely no objections to it.
Dominik: I chose a dry pancake, specifically with the gyro. In fact, they should add black olives to it and simply call it "Greek pancake", because it had little to do with the gyro. Fried chicken, seasoned very delicately, plus iceberg lettuce, tomato, corn and salad cheese, possibly Appetine or a similar product, judging by the smooth cubes and the fact, that it was much softer than a feta. The top of the pancake is tzatziki sauce.
Overall, the impressions were positive, because the pancake was very tasty after all. The sauce is also to be praised. Most of the restaurants, where I had the opportunity to try tzatziki sauce, I was getting the usual alioli sauce, whose passions I hate. Here, however, the sauce was light, the garlic was practically impossible to feel and the most important thing: there was a cucumber! Contrary to appearances, many pubs do not remember him. It is true that this is not my favorite tzatziki sauce yet (the best one was served to me in the Greco restaurant in Olsztyn), but he was really good. For the pancake I got a bit of delicious lamb's lettuce salad and tomatoes with green pesto. Lick your fingers!
The dessert turned out to be a disappointment, for which we ordered one serving of chocolate pancakes. That was absolutely enough for us, because, As you know, it is a very filling dish, and there are four pieces per serving. Additions to them were ground walnuts, artfully "fried" into the bottom of the pancake, bananas and maple syrup. The pancakes themselves weren't bad, the only problem is there, some of them were a little burnt, which immediately gave them an unpleasant bitter aftertaste. The second drawback was this, that Dominik's portion together with the nuts contained fragments of ground shells – so if you ever decide to have this dessert, do not bite into him with force, if you don't want to have missing teeth afterwards. The last downside: the waitress forgot to ask us for the sauce, and we remembered about him, when the last pieces of pancakes disappeared from our plates.
Anyway, despite all the shortcomings, which – let's hope so – were disposable, we highly recommend the restaurant. A place just in time for fans of flour dishes, vegetarians and people, who need to go out to a restaurant, and they have "too much a month at the end of the money".
