You would drive past Bee Rogi every day of the week. I did, twice in fact, when I was trying to find it, ending up in a seemingly never ending loop around Denton - Haughton Green to be precise - until I spotted it, tucked in between the post office and the florist.
I’d been looking for a good Polish place, and while there are a few flashier spots in town, this tiny establishment just outside the M60 tipped the balance with its online review score. While such online rumblings should rarely be used as a reliable yardstick for quality, who doesn’t love an underdog story? And at 4.9 stars out five at the time of writing, that’s, well, almost perfect right?
This sketch of near perfection was further inked into being by the menu on its Instagram page. Changing daily was a line-up of Polish greatest hits; dishes like chicken de volaille, Poland's answer to the chicken kiev, beef goulash with potato pancakes, sour cucumber soup, kotlet schabowy, a pork schnitzel topped with a fried egg, and traditional borscht. Oh, and dumplings. Dumplings for miles.
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So obviously, within only a couple of hours of this discovery, I’m racing around the M60 like any sane person would, to make sure this is all as near to perfect as it sounds. Bee Rogi is a play on pierogi, the Polish dumpling, and one of the very nice and welcoming ladies there who, I understand, is called Bea.
She used to work at Australasia, the upscale-y fusion place under its ostentatious glass pyramid in town, and now runs this place with her friend Aga. They’re from the north and south of Poland respectively.
The cute interior is every bit as homely as the name implies. On the walls are handmade lace doilies hung on the wall in frames, and crafted wax cotton table placings, also made on the premises which you can buy and take away. There are Polish posters on the walls, and the stereo is blaring Polish language radio.
Ever ambitious at what I can stuff myself with, a plate of dumplings (£11) is served up, ten of them, a mixed selection of the offerings on the chalkboard, other than the black smoked cod and kimchi variety, which I’m told are off today. They arrive in rainbow colours, scattered with crispy, salty fried breadcrumbs; red dumplings with beef presumably stewed for days. The White Polish (formerly White Russian, but the ‘Russian’ has been decisively crossed out) are filled with soothing potato and cheese.
Then there’s sensational pork and fresh cabbage, wrapped in verdant green, and the house ‘signature’ dumpling in yellow, filled with millet and dill cheese, which chimes with the dill-heavy slaw accompanying them. These are a tad - just a tad - under seasoned for my likely over seasoned palate. And that is the sole criticism of everything I guzzled down at Bee Rogi. These dumpling are superbly good. Gold medal-winning Olympic standard. I want to be buried with some in my pockets.
However, having ordered the pork goulash (£12) at the same time as the pierogis, I’m beginning to see the error in my ordering strategy, as I’m now woefully full. To advise, a plate of these is enough for anyone’s lunch. As much as it pained me, I abandoned three dumplings and pushed the plate out of reach, still leaving me the option to circle back to them later.
The goulash was everything I hoped it would be, served up in a steaming bowl with rib-sticking potato dumplings like giant gnocchi, and sauerkraut. The pork gives up its pretence of structure and melts at a glance, and the stew is hot with black pepper. Ludicrously, though, the fried Polish sausage on the menu is looking at me. Goading me. I order it too, slightly shamefully.
It arrives 10 minutes later. It’s a foot-long if it’s an inch, intoxicatingly smoked, with the top carved into a cross-hatch pattern like a hedgehog, so that it’s got crispy edges and corners. It’s one of the truly great sausages of my life. It comes with beetroot horseradish, buttery mash, and for £7, there is perhaps not a heartier lunch in the city for the price.
I want a slice of the apple pie, really I do. I’ve seen the pictures of it online, and it looks immense. And the cute cheesecake that’s been made to look like a giant wheel of cartoon Swiss cheese with holes in, ‘for the children’ jokes Bea.
But even the thought of taking a piece of either of them home offends my current state of fullness, so I tell myself ‘next time’. Because there will be a next time. And a time after that. And a time after that. And a… well, you get the idea.
Bee Rogi, 105 Haughton Green Rd, Denton, Manchester M34 7GR
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