Unfamiliar Kitchens

Eating out is one of the great joys of travel. I love food and I love trying as broad a range of things as possible, while away - ideally local and ideally seasonal. We spend a lot of time planning what and where to eat on our trips to make sure we experience the best and most authentic food a place has to offer.

Sometimes, though, it is nice to make use of the kitchen where you are staying and have a night in. A visit to the local market is always a must. It is one of the quickest ways to understand a place, its rhythms, its people, its priorities.

Then comes the kitchen itself.

A country kitchen at an Air BnB near Ragusa, Sicily.

Unfamiliar kitchens come with inevitable compromises. The blunt knife. The awful plastic chopping board, or worse, a glass one (which explains the blunt knife). An induction hob paired with a collection of pans that do not work on induction. Leftover salt and olive oil from previous guests. And, lurking at the back of the cupboard, the true heathen: balsamic glaze.

Cooking at home is an intuitive dance. Fridge to chopping board, to bin, to stove, back to the chopping board, then oven, sink, fridge again. A solid nine on Strictly. In an unfamiliar kitchen, this becomes the uncoordinated movement of a drunk uncle at a wedding. Where are the pans? Where did I put the garlic? Is this really the only knife they own?

Impatiently attempting to cook Swordfish an old outdoor grill

The fumbling intensifies if you decide to cook outside, or attempt to use an ancient wood oven. Spoilt by modern conveniences but instinctively drawn, like most men, to the primal appeal of cooking over open flames, you cannot resist. Hours are spent coaxing heat from wood and embers, trying to judge timings so that dinner does not quietly drift into midnight.

Serving presents its own challenges. No kitchen tongs. No proper serving spoon. Plates in questionable colour pallettes. Wine poured into a glass clearly designed for fizzy pop. It all pulls you out of your comfort zone, and somehow that is part of the appeal.

Once the frustration fades, you realise none of it really matters. A first-world problem, as they say. But it is a small and welcome reminder that travel is not all glamour and carefully curated feeds. Sometimes it is blunt knives, bad pans, and wine in the wrong glass. And somehow, that makes the experience richer, not poorer.

From an unfamiliar kitchen - nice ceramics and even some wine glasses, but a challenging cooking set-up

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My favourite place in Kraków

I am lucky enough to have visited Kraków many times now. My wife is Polish and came to university here and whilst her family are not from the city, it’s still not a million miles away and is regularly a port of call for when we visit.

Kraków is, of course, a well-trodden destination on the European city break path. Immediately obvious when walking around the old town with the array of nationalities and different languages ringing in the air. The English stag dos singing England songs, whilst ironically choosing to drink in an ‘Irish’ bar. Italian families passing, where you catch the inevitable topic of conversation being about eating. The small group of elderly Spanish decked out in walking gear, looking unfazed by the 30 degree heat, all whilst wearing a down jacket from Decathlon.

Adam Mickiewicz statue in Rynek Głowny

Kraków has a lot to offer. Much is known and written about its culture. It has one of the world’s oldest universities (Jagielllonia), has been home to numerous Nobel laureates, is full of multiple world class museums and collections of fine arts. It has a castle. The old town square is allegedly the largest open public space in Europe, surrounded by impressive renaissance architecture, such as the Cloth Hall, St Mary’s Basilica and the Town Hall tower. The list goes on…

But it’s not these things that I enjoy the most in Kraków. Nor is it Kazimierz, the Jewish Quarter, with its excellent restaurants & bars and patchwork of historical buildings. 

St. Mary’s Basilica

My favourite place in Kraków is Stary Kleparz, an old market. To the north of the old town and a few minutes walk from the main train station. The market is set in a square and is an outdoor covered market with everything you really could wish for, in terms of day-to-day living.

Leading into the square, you’re greeted by street vendors selling flowers, by the side of the road, for a very good price and local producers selling whatever fruit is in season from baskets. My most recent visit meant that this was local cherries, raspberries, blueberries, bilberries and strawberries. All are of exceptional quality with the cherries and bilberries in particular being hard to beat anywhere. 

Queuing for fruit & veg, Stary Kleparz

Stepping inside the covered market, a fairly modern collection of structures, you follow the narrow passageways around the network of stalls. There’s small brick structures with glazed frontages which essentially act as mini shops lining the route, with a more open, outdoor covered market type set up in the middle. This is where the majority of the fruit and veg vendors can be found.

Walking around is both nostalgic and new. There’s a stall selling discounted packets of confectionery items, with handwritten price labels shoved alongside the products. A vendor selling detergent “from Germany” (a hallmark of quality!?) and sellers with piles of kitchenware strewn across their stall, with all the utensils needed to make the perfect pierogi at home. Of course, the real stars of the show are the food vendors. The fruit and veg stalls with mountains of ridiculously large brocolli and cabbage. Clusters of asparagus of many varieties. Massive, ripe, nobbly tomatoes that actually have some flavour and don’t resemble biting into a Red Nose at Comic Relief (not that I have…). A vendor that only sells kiełbasa. Fishmongers. Butchers. A cheese seller. You name it, it’s here!

A confectionery stall that reminded me very much of the old school indoor markets at home

It reminds me in parts of traipsing around Rotherham or Castle markets, as a child. The sense of excitement, mixed with a bit of apprehension at the ensuing organised chaos.

Perhaps the best thing about Stary Kleparz, however is the ‘new’. This isn’t just a place to be nostalgic over. It is a place of today and of tomorrow. Modern, trendy vendors sit alongside the stall your grandma might go to for some tea bags. There’s multiple natural wine shops and bars. Greek delis. A Spanish deli. A focacceria, selling very good sandwiches. A couple of Italian delis and an oyster bar, to name but a few. 

Focaccia sandwiches from Fokarnia

I think it’s this mix of vendors. All alongside each other. All thriving and all attracting different demographics that make this such a great place to visit. There’s no pretentiousness whatsoever. It’s purely a marketplace for quality sellers. All in it together.

Sit under a vine covered terrace, eating an oyster whilst enjoying a skin contact orange wine from a small batch vineyard one minute, the next, be haggling over the price of a kilo of carrots. 

Wine on the vine covered terrace of Kawa i Wino

There are some similar examples in the UK. Borough Market being an obvious one. But it is such a tourist trap that if you can cope with the cattle-like conditions of navigating around, you’re then ripped off with eye-watering  prices for often mediocre products. It’s the perfect example of a market being gentrified and not, what a market should be – egalitarian and convivial. Stary Kleparz, for now at least, is both and it seems to be striking the balance perfectly well. 

It’s a good analogy really for the best bits of modern Poland. Forward looking with a renewed confidence, all whilst having a close tie to tradition. Aside from the obvious links I now have with this country, it’s maybe the reason why I most enjoy spending time here and why Stary Kleparz is my top tip to anyone visiting Kraków and wishing to get a ‘proper’ experience.