King Kielbasa reopens on Lake Avenue with Polish home cooking

King Kielbasa, a family-run Polish restaurant, is open again at 588 Lake Ave. after sorting out permits that held up a summer debut. The restaurant now serves lunch and dinner from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday, according to a first look published October 3 by Saratoga Living.

The restaurant sits on the Route 29 stretch of Lake Avenue heading east out of Saratoga Springs toward Schuylerville, in the building that used to house Kaleidoscope Cafe. Owner Gerard Bialek told Saratoga Living the first few days back were far busier than he expected.

The news at a glance

Here is what is confirmed so far, all from the Saratoga Living report:

• King Kielbasa first opened this summer, ran into permitting problems, and has now reopened fully permitted.
• Hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Wednesday through Sunday, which means the restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday.
• The menu is built on family recipes, with Bialek’s parents doing the cooking.
• Takeout is available, including delivery orders through DoorDash.

We have not found a published phone number or website for the restaurant yet. If you are planning a trip on a weekday, the Wednesday start is the thing to remember.

What’s on the menu

The center of the menu is, as the name suggests, kielbasa. The sausage comes on a roll or on rye bread with sauteed onions, according to Saratoga Living, and the portions are big. The magazine’s reviewers watched a takeout kielbasa get taped into a square box it did not quite fit inside.

The rest of the menu reads like a Polish family table. Saratoga Living listed these dishes:

• Potato and cheese pierogi, which the restaurant currently buys in but plans to make in house.
• Kluski Slaski, soft potato dumplings Saratoga Living compared to gnocchi, served in melted butter with sauteed onions, sour cream and optional bacon bits, for $12.
• Stuffed cabbage.
• Hunter’s stew, made with cabbage, carrots, onion, beef, pork, kielbasa and bacon bits.
• Potato latkes, served only Friday through Sunday.

There are also french fries and mozzarella sticks for anyone not ready to commit. The $15 Kings Combo pairs a kielbasa with fries and a drink. Bialek pitched the pricing plainly to Saratoga Living: “I think, per calorie, we’re better than McDonald’s.”

The latkes have a family backstory. Bialek’s mother does not make them because she dislikes the smell while they cook, he told the magazine, so his father makes them on weekends. That is why they show up only Friday through Sunday.

The family behind the counter

The Bialek family moved to the United States from Poland shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, according to Saratoga Living. They lived in Brooklyn and then Queens before settling in Schuylerville in 2003. Gerard Bialek graduated from Schuylerville High School in 2008, and he told the magazine he has already served some of his old classmates.

The recipes are his mother’s and the cooking is his father’s. Gerard handles everything else, from permits and marketing to the point of sale system, delivery apps and decorating. Bialek’s background is in search engine optimization, and he has done back-end marketing work for restaurants before, according to the report. That work, he said, is what made him want to run the front of a restaurant himself.

The interior has a Norman Rockwell streak, which Saratoga Living credited to Gerard’s own taste.

What’s coming next

King Kielbasa is still a work in progress, and the family has been open about the rough edges. The biggest one is a pierogi machine that arrived with instructions in a language that is neither English nor Polish. Bialek expected to have the machine running within about a week of the interview, according to Saratoga Living, at which point the restaurant would switch to homemade pierogi.

Further out, he has talked about a Polish take on chicken wings: fried chunks of kielbasa tossed in a house wing sauce. He also floated the idea of bottling that sauce for grocery shelves someday. Treat both as plans, not menu items, until they show up on the board.

Getting there

The restaurant is on Lake Avenue, which carries Route 29 east from downtown Saratoga Springs toward Schuylerville. Saratoga Living described the location as between Saratoga and Schuylerville. The 588 Lake Ave. address uses Saratoga Springs, but this stretch of Route 29 crosses from the city into neighboring towns, and we have not yet confirmed which municipality the building sits in. We will update this story once we do.

If you are driving out, the Wednesday through Sunday schedule and the weekend-only latkes are the details to plan around. Large orders travel, too: Saratoga Living watched a delivery driver pick up while they waited for their own food.

Why it matters

Our read: plenty of local delis and pubs put a kielbasa on the menu, but a restaurant built around one Polish family’s home cooking is a different thing. The Bialeks are also a local story, a Schuylerville family opening a business down Route 29 from where Gerard went to high school, and the early crowds suggest people were ready for the food.

King Kielbasa is new to our directory as of today. Find the listing at King Kielbasa, and see our Saratoga Springs town page for more places to eat nearby. For the rest of this fall’s restaurant openings, see our recent roundup of September openings and closings.

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