The first place most tourists will visit is the Old Town, which was almost completely razed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. In the years after World War II, the Old Town was rebuilt from scratch, using photographs and paintings as guides. Today, the area is a UNESCO World Heritage Site that’s home to museums, galleries, souvenir shops, cafes, and the Royal Castle. My first stop was a visit to the Museum of Warsaw, which tells the story of the city through everyday objects. It’s a fascinating exploration of Warsaw from the Middle Ages to World War II to the Soviet Era to today. Next, I wandered through the tiny Pharmacy Museum and Museum of Literature before stopping for a beer at U Fukiera, one of the cafes lining the main square with a menu of traditional Polish food.
Polish Cuisine Reimagined
When we first moved to Warsaw in the ’90s, Polish restaurants seemed to serve mostly variations of cabbage and pork, accompanied by a single boiled potato and seasoned only with a handful of parsley. (To this day, I still have an aversion to parsley.) School lunches were borderline traumatizing—I will never forget the all-too-frequent days where they served breaded fish and rice (not so bad) drowned in sickly sweet strawberry syrup (horrifying).
But the city’s restaurant landscape has progressed over the years. Now, chefs are using traditional Polish flavors in modern ways. At Dyletanci, the tasting menu features typical ingredients—horseradish, beets, kohlrabi, mushrooms, and trout—presented in the form of new and inventive dishes, highlighted by global influences like saffron, Roquefort, and truffle. At Bar Rascal, a hip natural wine bar with over 450 bottles on its wine list, I paired beet labneh and trout roe with a glass from Kamil Barczentewicz, produced just two hours from Warsaw.
