Despite the conventional wisdom, if you are from Chicago and no longer live there, it is not pizza that you miss but Polish food. My favorite hometown restaurant, The Busy Bee (now closed), was a family-owned Polish restaurant under the El tracks that served a wide selection of traditional Polski food. Not that I ever got to taste much of it, always getting stuck on the pierogi. Served with apple sauce and sour cream, these potato, cabbage or meat-stuffed dumplings are a perfect, cheap meal. Which is why the apparent lack of a single Polish restaurant in Budapest makes me so sad, and the prospect of tomorrow’s second-annual “Lengyel Buli” (Polish Party) in the bar of the MU Színház in Buda makes me so happy.
Aside from pierogi, there will be bigos, a Polish version of stuffed cabbage or székelykáposzta (layered cabbage), plus plenty of drink, as well as other Polish-related festivities. Among those cooking up the grub will be Katarzyna Pabijanek, a longtime Budapest resident who for a brief shining moment manned the kitchen at the Eckermann Café. So come along, stuff your face, and let Katarzyna and the other Poles know that, if they decide to fill this important missing hole in Budapest’s culinary puzzle with a year-around Polish restaurant, they’ll have at least two regular customers.
