Eating and Drinking in Kraków

Rightly or wrongly, the part of our trip to Kraków I was most excited about was the food. I love pierogis and kielbasa and was excited to spend a weekend enjoying them in between sightseeing. After our wild vodka adventure in St Petersburg, I was more skeptical of the vodka tasting we had planned, but the website promised it was a tasting not a pub crawl and we wouldn’t get drunk. Six shots of vodka later….

We really did enjoy the vodka and food tasting tour with Delicious Poland. It was run by a couple, the woman was Polish and her partner was Turkish. They were a lot of fun, as was the other couple on the tour, and they led us through old town where we sampled six types of vodka and lots of polish food. I didn’t even mind the pickled herring! Most of the food was delicious, lard on toast, cabbage stew in a bread bowl and lots of sausages. I also learned that a pickle after a shot of vodka really cuts down on the burn! I wasn’t joking about the shots though, vodka in Poland is not for sipping, and in fact, their the toast we learned translates to ‘To your health and to the bottom’. So bottoms up!

We tried lemon, herbal and Bison grass vodkas as well as a few pure ones. Our collection grew a bit in the Kraków airport duty free shop.
After the vodka adventure, we tried some craft beer bars in the old town with our new friends from the tour. MultiQulti and House of Beer had excellent craft beer selections, we could have stayed and drank all night. Unfortunately we had a 7:45 am pickup for our Aushwitz and Salt Mine tour the next day so we called it a night.
The best meal of our trip was at Saseidsi. A bit of a splurge, but worth it. The soup, pierogis and lamb were amazing. Lucas really enjoyed his first attempt at eating rabbit. An amazing wine selection and delicious food.

Our final meal in Poland was at U Babci Maliny. It’s tricky to find, through library doors to a courtyard and down to a cellar, but suddenly you’re in a well decorated bustling restaurant that smells amazing. It’s cheap, and the portions are large. We ordered 2 plates of pierogis (cheese and meat) and potato pancakes. We couldn’t finish them. Definitely worth the detour down old town side streets.