All previous reviews of Café Polonia begin with a line about this being Boston’s only Polish restaurant. But Polish food is no joke, and this fine, inexpensive little restaurant is not merely rooted in a Polish and Lithuanian neighborhood that has been known as "Polonia" for more than 50 years; it’s the specific product of the Barcikowski family, who also own the superb Baltic Deli that used to be in this space and has now moved across the street. Their roots, in turn, are in the Southern Polish region of Kielce, so some of the food here is Ukrainian, or Slovak- or Hungarian-influenced.

Although I have some Polish roots myself, I feel, perhaps like many American Jews, cut off from them by the Holocaust. I was therefore surprised to sense a certain frisson when I ordered a Lomza beer ($4). A Polish dining companion urged me to try Zywiec ($4) or Okocim ($4), which she prefers. But Lomza is where my father’s father was born, and I had never seen or eaten or quaffed anything from there before, so Lomza it was going to be. In fact, all three of these Polish beers are in a rather similar style, hoppy pilsners like Pilsner Urquell or the first years of Samuel Adams lager, but with a more amber color. Zywiec is the hoppiest; Okocim is somewhat maltier; and Lomza falls between.

Café Polonia also features warmed beer or wine drinks flavored with cinnamon and "carnation," which is a mistranslation of clove. The wine version ($5.95) is the better, like a hot sangria with berry flavors as well as the spice. The beer version ($4.95) is a somewhat heady warm drink with mostly clove aroma.

The breadbasket (rye bread, of course) comes with a dish of lard and cracklings, not exactly a health spread, but rather tastier than the French equivalent, rillettes. Appetizers include a grilled portobello mushroom ($6) filled with chopped ham, cheese, and pickles that’s quite successful. On a cold evening, we tried all the available soups: a beet barcz ($4) that was lighter and less sweet than I expected, with tasty mushroom dumplings; a mushroom soup of the day ($3) that included potatoes and would do for some dinners; and a tripe soup ($5) that was peppery and very satisfying. Bacon-wrapped scallops ($7) aren’t what I would imagine as Polish food, but they’re delicious, and six scallops in a lot of crisp bacon with a salad would make a whole dinner for some people. Smoked salmon ($9), however, I didn’t like; the salmon eggs (described perhaps satirically on the menu as "Russian caviar") were too fishy, although six horns of salmon and lots of rye thins were plenty to eat.

For entrées, most parties have at least one "Polish plate" ($11), which combines several of the essentials: three cheese pierogis, a hunter’s stew (bigos) of sauerkraut and sausage, some excellent split and grilled kielbasa, and a fine, large stuffed cabbage. The most expensive entrées are a breast of duckling ($14) served with jellied cranberry sauce, sliced potatoes, and asparagus; and the zarkoje ($14), or gulyás delight, which is a pot of beef stew served under a dome of Yorkshire pudding. This is described as Hungarian gulyás. However, my Hungarian grandmother, whose cooking I knew well, used more paprika and caraway, and she cut the meat and potatoes smaller. I preferred this Polish gulyás, with its juniper berries and bell peppers, and the "Gypsy potato pancake" ($12), actually two immense potato pancakes with the gulyás stuffed in between.

Also entirely satisfactory are two thick slices of baked pork loin ($12) in mushroom gravy, with sides of dilled mashed potatoes, chopped coleslaw, sweet stewed red cabbage, and mixed sautéed vegetables. The same side vegetables come with a Sobiesky chicken cutlet ($12), itself the finest kind of fried meat loaf on the planet.

In addition to the beers and warmers mentioned above (and sometimes other beers from Eastern Europe), Café Polonia has some interesting inexpensive wines, typified by a 2001 primitivo (the original zinfandel) from Adriatic Italy ($7/glass; $25/bottle). Tea and coffee are $1.50, and desserts are a bargain. Nalesniki ($3) are crêpes, here served with fruit (apple or cherry our night) or blintz-like cheese fillings, and chocolate sauce. Szarlotta ($4.50) works out to a kind of apple crisp, really more like an apple-stuffed crumb cake, with vanilla ice cream. Vienna cheesecake ($4) is Viennese in that it’s layered. The cake of the day ($3) was seven layers of alternating chocolate cream and yellow cake, not unlike a Dobos torte. This seems to be as close as Polish desserts get to real chocolate.

The atmosphere of this small restaurant is like a rural European inn, with blond wood and decorative crafts. There’s a picture of one of the owners with former Polish president Lech Walesa. Café Polonia is the size of a 10-table bistro, but has only five tables, because most of them seat six or eight people, and probably a few more at peak times. One background tape featured Polish pop music remarkably similar to classic Motown. Service is good, not incredibly fast, but this is food to savor and linger over. Doubtless there is some synergy with the nearby Our Lady of Chestochowa church, but even an atheist would fall to his knees before the 100 percent–sourdough rye bread sold at the Baltic Deli across the street. You could also obtain some very tasty kielbasa and enough frozen pierogis of various kinds to cater a Polish wedding, but the rye bread is just amazing, and certified (by me) as suited to the South Beach diet and any other diet. It is baked in four-pound loaves, which are cut in half before bagging, so you have a long bread with only one heavy crust, and the crumb itself is so dense that it cuts (even in thin slices) as well with a chef’s knife as it does with a serrated knife.

Robert Nadeau can be reached at RobtNadeau@aol.com.