A Polish Week: Feasting on a Farthing

Turns out I like Polish food. Like, a lot.

First, there's the pierogi, which even in its most basic form combines four of my favorite food groups (noodles, mashies, cheese, and bacon fat). Of course, the humble pierogi can be fancified, as the menu of this pierogateria attests to: 

 

Then there are gołąbki (pronounced "go-wabki"), cabbage rolls stuffed with minced beef and onions and rice and often topped with tomato or mushroom sauce. These are hearty comfort food, savory and flavorful and with a texture that melts away (what those in the food industry might call a good "mouth feel").

There's a lot of hunks of meat, like the kotlet schabowy (basically wienerschniztel). While in the mountains, we had a fantastic dish of potato pancakes (akin to latkes) topped with a smoky beef goulash. 

Kotlet Schabowy and bigos (stew), with the ubiquitous potatoes and beer.

And the best part is, you can eat well in Poland for about $5 a day.

One thing you should know about the Poles: they take their sweets seriously. For breakfast, a couple pączki at Warsaw's famous A. Blikle bakery (think glazed raised doughnuts filled with rose-flavored jam) should run less than $1.

The humble zapiekanka.

 

Street food, that standby of budget travelers, is abundant in Poland. Titan among them is zapiekanka, roughly analogous to a French bread pizza topped with canned mushrooms, processed cheese and ketchup. A standard zapiekanka will cost about $0.50 and is best eaten while (very) drunk. 

Of course, there are fancier versions, like those available in Nowy Plac (the "new square") in the Kazimierz quarter of Krakow. Full disclosure: though we sampled multiple versions of zapiekanka, I was never fully won over. Meanwhile, I missed out on eating a keilbasa while in Poland. I suspect this would be a much better bang for your street food buck.

Lining up for zapiekanka n the Nowy Plac.

Food seems cheap in Poland mostly thanks to the exchange rate, but there is also one social institution that is the budget traveler's dream come true: the milk bar. Bar mleczny were instituted during the Communist era so that everyone would have the opportunity to enjoy a restaurant meal. A few still remain, thanks to subsidies from the state, serving up traditional Polish food served in an institutional cafeteria-like setting with no frills (and no English), but at about a quarter of the price of normal Polish restaurants. Our best luck came from using In Your Pocket Guides (incredibly helpful and surprisingly free - or very cheap - if you pick one up locally) and picking bar mleczny just outside the main tourist zones. 

Our favorite, in the new town of Krakow, served us up heaping plates of pierogis "russe" (potatoes, cheese, and lardons) and gołąbki topped with mushroom sauce; with a Coke Zero, our grand total was still less than $4. Plus we shared a table with a Polish student, surrounded by elderly Polish pensioners and entertained by construction workers popping in for a quick bite. It was a slice of everyday life, with hearty food and a harmless price tag: my favorite kind of traveling.