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EATING AND DRINKING |
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Poles take their food seriously, providing snacks of feast-like
proportions for the most casual visitors, and maintaining networks of
country relatives or local shops for especially treasured ingredients -
smoked meats and sausages, cheeses, fruits and vegetables. The cuisine
itself is a complex mix of influences: Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian,
German and Jewish traditions all leaving their mark. To go with the food,
there is excellent beer and a score of wonderful vodkas.
Once, if you wanted a really good meal in Poland, you had to hope for an
invitation to someone's house. Now, however, with the moves towards a
market economy, the country's fast-growing number of restaurants - most
of which specialized in ungarnished slabs of meat during the communist
era - are looking up. In the cities at least, there's now a distinctly
Western spread of places to eat and a cosmopolitan range of cuisines.
What is undeniable still is that eating out is a bargain, with splendid
meals available for under £10/US$14 a head.
Drinking habits are changing, too. Poles for years drank mainly
at home, while visitors stuck to the hotels, with such other bars as
existed being alcoholic-frequented dives. In recent years, though,
something of a café-bar culture has been emerging in the cities, and
though the old drinking dens survive, you'll find plenty of choice for a
relaxing, unthreatening night out.
Food
Like their central and eastern European neighbours, Poles are insatiable
meat eaters: throughout the austerities of the past decade, meat
consumption here remained among the highest in Europe. Beef and pork in
different guises are the mainstays of most meals, while hams and
sausages are consumed at all times of the day, as snacks and sandwich-fillers.
Game is also common, and lamb is a speciality in the mountain regions
where sheep-rearing is practised. In the coastal and mountain regions,
you can also expect fish - particularly carp and freshwater trout - to
feature prominently on the menus, with lots of seafood in the Baltic
region.
A meal without meat is a contradiction in terms for most Poles, and
vegetarians will often be forced to find solace in customary stand-bys
like omelettes, cheese-based dishes and salads. Thankfully there are now
a few vegetarian restaurants starting to appear in the larger cities,
while an ever-increasing number of mainstream restaurants offer
vegetarian dishes ( potrawy jarskie ), albeit largely unimaginative ones.
The word wegetarianski is useful, as are the phrases bez miesa (without
meat) and bez ryby (without fish). The site has details of vegetarian
restaurants throughout the country, although it's currently in Polish
only.
Coffee, tea and sweets
Poles are inveterate tea and coffee drinkers, their daily round
punctuated by endless cups or glasses, generally with heaps of sugar.
Tea ( herbata ), which is cheaper and so marginally more popular, is
drunk Russian-style in the glass, without milk and often with lemon. In
most places, you'll get hot water and a tea bag, though occasionally it
will come naturalna style - a spoonful of tea leaves with the water
poured on top.
Coffee ( kawa ) in Poland has improved immeasurably thanks to Pozegnanie
z Afryka ( Out of Africa ), the chain of coffee bars that has spread
throughout the main cities, and a real treat for the coffee connoisseur.
Remember that coffee is served black unless you ask otherwise, in which
case specify with milk ( z mleckiem ) or with cream ( ze smietanka ).
Many cafés ( kawarnia ) offer only kawa naturalna , which is a strong
brew made by simply dumping the coffee grounds in a cup or glass and
pouring water over them. Espresso and capuccino, usually passable
imitations of the Italian originals, are now available in the more
modern cafés and restaurants. In cafés and bars alike a shot or two of
vodka or winiak (locally produced cheap brandy) with the morning cup of
coffee is still frequent practice.
Restaurant meals
The average restaurant ( restauracja ) is open from late morning through
to mid-evening. Until recently, all but the smartest closed early,
winding down around 9pm in cities, earlier in the country, although
these days there's more variety and most cities now boast several late-opening
options (particularly at weekends). Bear in mind that the total shutdown
principle, applied around religious festivals and public holidays, often
applies to restaurants. In smaller towns, the big hotels may be the only
place open.
Although many restaurant menus , particularly in the bigger cities, are
in both Polish and English, those in smaller, rural places will usually
be in Polish only. Menus are broken up into courses with separate
headings: zupy (soups); przekaski (starters/hors d'oeuvres); dania
drugie (main course); dodatki (side dishes); desery (desserts); and
napoje (drinks). While the list of dishes apparently on offer may be
long, in reality only things with a price marked next to them will be
available, which will normally reduce the choice by fifty percent or
more. If you arrive near closing time or late lunchtime, the waiter may
inform you there's only one thing left.
There are no hard and fast rules about tipping , although it's
increasingly common to leave an additional ten to fifteen percent, or
round the bill up to the nearest convenient figure.
Drinks
Poles' capacity for alcohol has never been in doubt, and drinking is a
national pursuit. Much of the drinking goes on in restaurants, which in
smaller towns or villages are often the only outlets selling alcohol.
In the cities and larger towns, there's a far greater range of
atmospheric and pleasant drinking holes than there used to be a few
years ago, with a convivial crop of privately run bars ( bary ) and
café-bars , plus the odd faux-Irish, Scottish or English pub . As a
result, hotel bars - once the preserve of Westerners or wealthier Poles
- have lost their stranglehold on the tourist market and are largely the
preserve of businessmen and prostitutes. You'll still come across
traditional drink bars - basic and functional, these are almost
exclusively male terrain and generally best avoided: the haunt of wide
boys and hardened alcoholics, they reflect the country's serious alcohol
problems, caused in part by the traditional preference for spirits over
beer or wine. Among the younger generation, however, things are changing
- not least as a result of a massive advertising campaign by the
breweries - with beer rapidly replacing vodka as the tipple of choice.
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