Bar mleczny

Uniwersytecki aka The Cockroach

Bar mleczny- literally milk bar, is a typically Polish kind of cafeteria. They were invented by the Communist authorities of Poland in the mid-1960s as a means of offering cheap meals to people working in companies that had no official canteen. The name originates from the fact that until the late 1980s, the meals served there were mostly dairy-based and vegetarian. Most of these milk bars have now been closed down, but you can still find a couple in big cities like Warsaw and Krakow. Most people that eat at these milk bars are students, old people and homeless people, as meals are still very cheap, and on the most part, decent. I had a meal in the Uniwersytecki milk bar, that has, in the communist days, earned the nickname Cockroach bar! The menu is only in Polish and the ladies working there don't speak any English, so it was hard to pick something. I settled on some pirogies, as the word in Polish is the same as the one in English, but I had no idea what they would be stuffed with! They turned out to be filled with some kind of meat- they were ok, but definitely not the best I have had. The portion was smaller than I had expected, and I was left still hungry, so I ordered a soup (tomato soup with rice) and a desert (some kind of crepe filled with apples and served with some kind of sour milk). The meal was decent and very cheap, but I am not sure I would eat there regularly if I were to live in Poland.