Kraków is one of the best places in Europe to eat well on a modest budget. The food is hearty, seasonal and rooted in the countryside, the portions are generous and the cellar restaurants of the Old Town and the courtyards of Kazimierz make dining part of the sightseeing. Here is how to eat your way through the city, from the street snacks to the sit-down meals and the traditional drinks.
Start with the classics
Pierogi, filled dumplings, are the national dish, and every menu has them. The traditional fillings are potato and cheese, known as ruskie, meat, cabbage and mushroom, and sweet versions with fruit in summer. They are served boiled or fried, often with fried onions or sour cream. Try a mixed plate if you can. Then try żurek, a sour rye soup with sausage and egg served in a bread bowl, and barszcz, a clear beetroot soup, especially at Christmas. For a main course, bigos, a hunter's stew of sauerkraut and meats, and golonka, roast pork knuckle, are the traditional choices, while placki ziemniaczane, potato pancakes, are a filling vegetarian alternative.
Street food
The obwarzanek is Kraków's answer to the bagel, a ring of dough boiled and baked and sold from blue carts around the Old Town, with sesame, poppy seed or salt. It is the cheapest and most local snack in the city. The zapiekanka is a long half-baguette topped with mushrooms, cheese and ketchup and toasted under a grill, a communist-era invention that is now a Kazimierz tradition, and the best place to buy one is the round market building on Plac Nowy, where queues form late at night. Oscypek, the smoked sheep's cheese of the Tatras, is sold grilled with cranberry jam at stalls in the Main Market Square and the Christmas market.
Milk bars and cellar restaurants
A bar mleczny, or milk bar, is a canteen-style restaurant left over from the communist period, serving simple Polish dishes at very low prices. Several survive in the centre, and they are a good way to try pierogi and soups at lunchtime, though you order and pay at a counter and share tables. At the other end of the scale are the cellar restaurants of the Old Town, set in vaulted medieval basements, which serve refined Polish cooking and are best booked ahead at weekends. Kazimierz has a more bohemian mix, with Jewish-style dishes, vegetarian cafes and courtyards that fill up on summer evenings, and the market at Stary Kleparz is the place for fresh produce and a quick lunch.
Sweet things
Poland has a serious pastry tradition. Try a kremówka, a custard-cream slice made famous by Pope John Paul II's love of it, a sernik, the local cheesecake, and makowiec, a rolled poppy-seed cake. Cafes in the Old Town and Kazimierz are good places to linger over coffee and cake, and the old coffee houses around the Main Market Square keep a tradition of slow afternoons. In winter, look for hot chocolate thick enough to stand a spoon in.
Drinking
Poland is known for vodka, and the best way to try it is in a flavoured version, such as żubrówka with bison grass, or a honey or cherry liqueur. Craft beer is now strong in Kraków, with several breweries and taprooms in Kazimierz, and the cocktail scene is lively in the cellars of the Old Town. In winter, mulled wine and mulled beer appear at the Christmas market. Coffee is excellent, from traditional black coffee served with the grounds to flat whites. Tipping about ten percent is normal in sit-down restaurants.
Food tours and cooking classes
If you want to dig deeper, a guided food tour of the Old Town and Kazimierz is a good way to taste a range of dishes with explanations, and pierogi cooking classes are popular with visitors who want to take a skill home. Choose a tour that includes sit-down tastings rather than only street snacks, and tell the organiser about any dietary needs in advance.
Where to base yourself
If food is a priority, stay in the Old Town or Kazimierz, where restaurants and bars are on your doorstep. Hotel Stary and Hotel Copernicus have good restaurants of their own, and Hotel Indigo sits close to the Stary Kleparz market and a restaurant that the Michelin Guide has recommended.
