Eating in Krakow

Last month we travelled to Poland, touching down in Krakow. The guy from our hotel recommended a couple of places, one of which was two doors down from the hotel we stayed at, so this was our first point of call. We were handed menus in polish and perused them for way too long despite our inability to actually read them. Once this situation had been corrected we ordered Pierogi, mine stuffed with cheese, his stuffed with pork and beef. When they arrived they look identical to the Chinese dumplings we’ve been noshing of late. They looked like huge ravioli except without a sauce, though mine had a little melted butter to soak up with the dough. When I bit into my ‘cheese’ Pierogi I found the strangest combination of flavours, sweet and savoury at the same time. At first I thought the butter was a kind of syrup, but after further inspection of the contents of the dumpling I worked out that the cheese was in fact the sweet ingredient, and tasted like soft cheese mixed with icing sugar. I think I ate a couple of them while I was making up my mind and then eventually gave up and tried the pork and beef variety, mercifully savoury. The texture of the contents reminded me of really flaky tuna or beef spread and tasted like a mixture of the two.

Krakow has a lot of fast food available to purchase on the street, practically on the corner of every street are pretzel vendors selling all sizes and shapes of lovely soft bread for about 40p. We also sampled the equally rife kebabs, in toasted pitta with hot sauce and oodles of cabbage. That was delish, though I managed to drip the yoghurty dressing all down myself leaving some worrying marks around my crotch.

In the evening we walked to a place near the Jewish Quarter that Steve had been to before, he was looking forward to the huge quantities of meat he’d been served last time. Once we were sat down one of the diners next to us told us we wouldn’t need two courses, only order one. Steve ordered the Officer’s Platter, which was a mixed grill and I ordered lamb sausages. His food was delivered on a wooden board with potatoes, all the meat was nice and there was quite pile a lot of it. Mine was also nice, with chips, we shared it and exchanged different meats and styles of potatoes romantically across the table. Accompanying the meal, accompanying most meals in Poland was the traditional polish salad of cabbage and beetroot in various guises, usually I’m not a massive cabbage fan, certainly not the traditional Yorkshire way of cooking it, where it’s boiled within an inch of it’s life and slopped onto the plate unseasoned as part of a Sunday roast, but I can usually manage pickled cabbage as I’m a huge fan of pickled everything (apart from eggs – that’s so wrong) but there was an undertone of something unfamiliar and unpleasant, I think it was mint. Not a fan of mint at all. All in all the meal was great and I was ravenous any way due to the epic fail of the meal earlier. All this was served up with large amounts of Polish beer, live polish music with an energetic atmosphere. Last time Steve was here for his cousins wedding the bride, a local, said it was the best place to eat in Krakow. We drank and ate too much and truly had a good night, I’ve just found their card in my wallet it was called Pod Wawelem on Gertrudy and I would recommend it to anyone visiting Krakow, just don’t order two courses, one course is more than enough.

On the last night we literally walked around for an hour trying to choose somewhere to eat, somewhere that served both borsch, a polish beetroot soup and bigos a rustic kind of stew, as Steve wanted to try them both before we left. Nowhere served bigos and our wanderings had made me hungry so we settled for somewhere else the hotel guy had recommended again, Miod i Vino, translated as Honey and Wine, he said it was lovely food just a little more expensive. Steve wanted to order a Dukes Taster Menu where you try a little bit of loads of different dishes, but unfortunately that was off the menu. Massive shame as we love our platter style food. We ordered starters, Steve had the borsch, served in a big mug and I ordered Krakow herring, served with sour cream and onions. I didn’t particularly like mine, the texture of the herring wasn’t nice, though I did like the sour cream and onion mixture on the top and spooned that onto the dark, dense bread we’d been given. Steve loved the herring so we swapped over and he hungrily shovelled my starter into his mouth while I hesitantly tasted the borsch. It was okay, but I didn’t want much of it, again there was a sweetness to it that I couldn’t come to terms with, I’d expected it to taste salty and acetous, so most of that was left untouched on the table. My main was pleat of pork tenderloin in a creamy sauce, and when it arrived on the table I realised that pleat meant plait and the meat had literally been plaited. There’s something either troubling or charming at the thought of a chef, hunched over the work surface, tongue out in concentration with slivers of meat between his fingers as he plaits my dinner for me. That, my friend is workmanship. It was great. Loved this meal, we got rice and polish style potatoes as well. Steve had stuffed pork with sheep cheese, this also was loverly, just not as good mine. Again the atmosphere in here was lively, the traditional band playing roused the diners.

We returned home with our favourite part of Poland, backpacks crammed with as much Zubrovka as we could afford/carry. This Polish Vodka, flavoured with bison grass, tastes great chilled or my favourite with apple juice. You can’t buy it in the UK and this is pretty much why we went to Poland.