Biały Królik

Buttermilk foam at the pass

Cod meets potato, buttermilk foam and dill oil before the plate leaves the pass. Suliman Saleem, Chef at Biały Królik in Gdynia, keeps that Polish frame close, even when the room around it leans into the storybook language of the White Rabbit. His work here reads through restraint: fish, roots, dairy, herbs, game and stock handled with the calm of a kitchen that values control over flourish.

Saleem’s earlier role at De Babel in Scottsdale sits behind the present discipline. That kitchen formed habits of exactness and consistency, and those habits travel into his Gdynia station without turning the cooking into biography. At Biały Królik, Polish cuisine remains the center of gravity. The wider view comes in how he lets technique, cross-cultural reference and local produce sit together without forcing a new vocabulary over the old one.

Polish roots, measured through the menu

The kitchen works across tasting menu and à la carte formats, with a contemporary Polish line running through both. Cod with potatoes, buttermilk and dill oil gives the method its clearest shape: the fish is salted for 4 hours, then set against puree, foam and herb oil, a sequence that depends on balance rather than decoration. Aged rib eye steak arrives from Pniewy with parsnip, pink beetroot and potato croquets after 30-day aging. Guinea fowl takes demi-glace. French rooster comes in white wine with mushrooms.

The register is regional without being sealed off. Kashubian duck, forest herbs, fish, vegetables, cheese and game belong naturally to this part of Poland, and Biały Królik uses them as working material, not nostalgia. The menu’s theatrical thread, including the prompt “Follow the White Rabbit,” stays most convincing when it gives the servers a structure for storytelling and leaves the craft on the plate. Foams, sorbets, aging, curing and pickling appear as tools in the program. They do not replace the base note of Polish cooking; they sharpen it.

A manor room with a steady pass

The room sits on the ground floor of the Quadrille Hotel, at Ul. Folwarczna 2, in a manor-house setting that keeps the restaurant intimate rather than grand. Warm light, white and black floors, wall pictures and carefully placed details build the Alice in Wonderland atmosphere without taking the pass out of view. It feels composed, with enough quiet in the room for servers to carry the narrative of a tasting menu and enough formality to keep the service line precise.

That matters for Saleem’s cooking because the food asks for attention to small shifts: dill oil against buttermilk, sauerkraut with lemongrass, parsnip beside aged beef, mushroom with white wine and rooster. The place gives those gestures room. When the table closes, the memory is less a theme than a set of materials held in order: cod, buttermilk foam, dill oil, and the White Rabbit’s room at Biały Królik.