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Based on everyone’s rave reviews, and the off-chance that I could make my girlfriend vomit at the table, I made a short trek to the south Minneapolis icon last weekend for tantalizing Polish food and live polka. Nye’s, which has been featured by everything from the Food Network to USA Today, is almost as good as advertised.

Almost.

Yeah, the atmosphere is amazing. Some people were dressed in suits, others were wearing remnants of maroon and gold from the University of Minnesota football game earlier in the day. I don’t think the light fixtures have changed since the restaurant opened in 1949. It’s a dive, and if I’m looking for something as rustic as good Polish food, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

The food is terribly inconsistent and the selection of Polish entrees is lacking. For starters, there’s no blood soup, so while my taste buds were saved, I was also slightly disappointed. At dinnertime, Nye’s offers only four different Polish meals to complement their wide array of quasi-Slavic and American fare. I chose the Golabki plate, or something like cabbage rolls for those of us that grew up this side of Warsaw.

The Golabki features a spicy ground beef, pork and garlic mixture that is rolled into baseball-sized balls and then wrapped in fresh cabbage leaves. They filled my palate with excitement when I realized how the cabbage met the stuffing in a marriage of mellow flavor and delicate texture.

My dinner came with a cabbage soup and a loaf of freshly baked bread infused with intense but oh-so-luscious onion and poppy seed. In addition, the serving of pierogi, or Polish dumplings, we shared for an appetizer was amazingly savory. I was beginning to think Nye’s would become one of my favorite restaurants.

Then I tried my soup.

Sure, cabbage soup is peasant food. I wasn’t expecting a rush of flavor, but any flavor at all would have been nice. It was more like a hodgepodge of twelve or so ingredients that failed to track their own identities and meshed into nothingness.

And my girlfriend’s Chicken Kiev (which is actually French and not Ukrainian)? Well, let’s say that I’ve tasted similar ones in the frozen section at the local Super Target.

Still, Nye’s is worth going to for the live polka alone. Every Friday and Saturday night since 1967, the Ruth Adams Polka Band has graced the Twin Cities with all the feverish kitsch you’d expect from something called the Ruth Adams Polka Band. There’s also a piano bar and I’m told they serve some mighty fine cocktails.

At nearly $20 to feed one person, I would have just settled for some blood soup and some consistency.