Wrocław Milk Bars
A lot has changed over years since communism got kneecapped and Poland joined the EU. Today a destination as popular as Wrocław hardly seems any more alien or adventurous to tourists than well-frequented Paris or Venice. And while many of the old ways of the old days have disappeared or become slightly disneyfied, one relic remains steadfastly un-Western: the Polish milk bar. These steamy cafeterias serving traditional cuisine to an endless queue of tramps, pensioners and students provide a grim glimpse into Eastern Bloc Poland and have all the atmosphere (and sanitary standards) of a gas station restroom. We love them. For the cost of a few coins you can eat like an orphaned street urchin, albeit an extremely well-fed one. Put the Racławice Panorama on hold, you’ll learn a lot more about Poland by making a visit to the milk bar (‘bar mleczny’ in Polish) in what should be a required cultural experience for anyone who has just set foot in the country.
Initiated by the government after WWII, milk bars were the new party’s ‘clever’ attempt at popularising milk-drinking (as opposed to moonshine), inspired by Poland’s large surplus of dairy products. As originally envisioned,
no hot dishes were served; this was a place where you went simply to enjoy milk (hence the name), humbly served in .25 litre glass with a straw (so classy). As restaurants were nationalised and then shut down by PL’s communist authorities, by the mid-60s milk bars were widely prevalent across Poland and the party concept had shifted towards providing cheap, fast, dairy-based meals to the masses and especially workers; quite often meals at the local milk bar were included in a worker’s salary. In addition to milk, yoghurt, cottage cheese and other dairy concoctions, milk bars offered omelettes and egg cutlets, as well as flour-based foods like pierogi. Times were so desperate under communism that many bar mleczny resorted to chaining the cutlery to the table to deter rampant thievery; by this same reasoning you’ll still notice today that most milk bars use disposable dishes and the salt and pepper are dispensed from plastic cups with a spoon – the spice cellars have probably been missing for 50 years. Similarly, the orders are still taken by blue-haired, blue-veined, all-business babcias – usually wearing an apron over their nightgown and slippers – and the food is as inspired as ever, the only difference being meat isn’t rationed anymore in modern PL. Indeed, today’s milk bars evoke a timelessness to be savoured just as the milk soup with noodles served to schoolchildren in PL in the 1980s was. With the collapse of communism most bar mleczny went bankrupt, however, fortunately for us all, many of these feed museums were saved and continue to be kept open and dirt cheap through state subsidies. The range of available dishes dwindles as closing time approaches, so go early, go often. Below we list the most authentic milk bars the city centre:
Wroclaw » Restaurants & Cafes » Milk Bars
