Polish food has a hearty, homemade feel, and when it's done well, it can be delicious. The staple of Polish cuisine is probably the pierogi, a pocket of dough stuffed with anything from potato meal, cottage cheese, or cabbage to ground beef or even raspberries or strawberries. Pierogies are traditionally prepared boiled and served with fried onions (except of course the fruit-filled ones), though you may also find them baked or fried and topped with anything from sour cream to garlic sauce. Pierogies are extremely flexible. They can be eaten as a snack or as a main course, for lunch or for dinner. They also make a great option for vegetarians; just be sure to tell them to hold the bacon bits they sometimes pour on top. Pierogies prepared "Ruskie" style are meatless, stuffed with potatoes and cottage cheese. Placki, potato pancakes, are nearly as ubiquitous and delicious, and are often cooked with mushrooms or smoked meat.
Meals generally begin with an appetizer, cold (przeka[rc]ski zimne) or hot (przeka[rc]ski gora[rc]ce). Among the former, herring (sledz), usually served in a sour cream sauce and piled with chopped onions, is my favorite. Other popular cold starters include stuffed fish or paté (pasztet). Hot starters can include pierogies or a piece of homemade sausage (kiebasa).
Soups (zupy) are a mainstay. Zurek is a filling, sourish rye broth, seasoned with dill and usually served with sausage and egg. Barszcz is a clear, red-beet soup, often served with a little pastry on the side. Bigos, known on menus in English as "hunter's stew," another national mania, is made from sauerkraut, and is something between a soup and a main course. Every Polish grandmother has her own version, and local lore says the homemade variety tastes best on the seventh reheating!
Main courses are less original, and often revolve around chicken, pork, or beef, though game (venison or boar usually) and fish (pike and trout are popular) are also common. Sides (dodatki) usually involve some form of potato, fried or boiled, or sometimes fried potato dumplings. More creative sides include buckwheat groats or beets, the latter sometimes flavored with apple. Desserts include fruit pierogies, the ubiquitous ice cream (lody), and pancakes, sometimes filled with cottage cheese and served with fruit sauce.
Mealtimes adhere to the Continental standard. Breakfast is usually taken early, and is often no more than a cup of tea or coffee and a bread roll. Hotels usually lay on the traditional buffet-style breakfast, centered on cold cuts, cheeses, yogurts, and cereals, but this is more than what a Pole would normally eat. Lunch is served from about noon to 2pm, though restaurants don't usually get rolling until about 1pm. Dinner starts around 6pm and can go until 9 or 10pm. After that, kitchens start closing down.
Snack foods run the gamut from Western fast-food outlets (McDonald's, KFC, and Pizza Hut are the most common) to kabob stands and pizza parlors. You'll find decent pizza in nearly every Polish city and town of any size. Look especially for zapiekanki, foot-long, open-faced baguettes, topped with sauce and cheese and baked.
As for drinking, Poles are best known for their vodka, but it's beer in fact that's the national drink. You'll find the major brands, Okocim, Lech, Tyskie, and Zywiec, just about everywhere. There's little difference among the majors, though Okocim might get the nod -- its slightly sweetish taste reminiscent of Czech Budvar. Men take theirs straight up. Women frequently sweeten their beer with fruit syrup (raspberry is the most common) and drink it through a straw! Among the most popular vodkas, Belvedere and Chopin are considered top shelf, though increasingly imported vodkas are squeezing out the local brands. In addition, you'll find a range of flavored vodkas. Zubrówka is slightly greenish, owing to a long blade of bison grass from the east of the country in every bottle. Miodówka, honey-flavored and easy to drink in large quantity, is worth a try. Wine is much less common, and nearly always imported.
As for nonalcoholic drinks, Poles are traditionally tea drinkers, though coffee, increasingly sold as espressos and lattes in trendy coffee shops, is making inroads. Tea is normally drunk in a glass with sugar. The quality of the coffee has greatly improved in the past decade, but for some reason the dark, bitter liquid called "coffee" served at hotel and pension breakfasts is still often undrinkable.
