Happy Pig Tastes Better
During my break from the Nationalist Karaoke, I found just the restaurant I must have been looking for. Chlopski Jadlo. Not sure what this meant, other than that it sounded pretty authentically Polish, whatever that meant.
Well, it at least looked like it would be authentic. Had the makes of an old country inn; raw wood walls, backlit paper windows, and a menu that looked like a book-sized replica of a country house. Trying to be authentic, I ordered some borscht, and what is supposed to be a peasant’s classic, consisting of pork fried in three different ways. Before my entree arrived, I was given bread and two kinds of cream; one which looked like crisco with bits of bacon, and the other which looked like a cream cheese with unidentifiable green bits. The crisco was quite good; I remember my Polish teacher in Chicago telling me about something called “smalec”, which is supposedly made of pig fat and bits of apple and onion. She went on to say that Polish people ate this and were still not fat like Americans. She also said this would taste better than it sounded, because in Poland, pigs were allowed to roam free and were not caged in like in America. “Happy pig tastes better,” she concluded.
I think she was right.
Tags: Food, Poland, Travel
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