Get stuffed

Let Stash Café be your
surrogate Polish grandmother

by BARTEK KOMOROWSKI

Like architecture writer Witold Rybczynski, I had two Polish grandfathers. But I was decidedly better endowed in Polish grandmothers, having had three of them. My mother’s stepmother—a jolly, rotund “góralka,” or highlander—always treated my sister and I as if we were her own grandchildren. As a native Pole that has been fed, often to excess, by three grandmothers, I consider myself a connoisseur of homestyle Polish food.

My grandmothers, two of which are still alive, live in Poland, which means that eating at their tables is an infrequent privilege. When I have a hankering for some homey grub, my preferred destination has long been Stash Café. I prefer it not just for its food but also for its atmosphere—exposed stone walls, wooden tables and benches, Polish theatre posters, dim lighting and a live pianist who alternates between jazz standards and Radiohead (I kid you not).

At my grandmothers’ houses, most everyday dinners started with a soup. Stash offers two Polish standards, barszcz (aka borscht) and zurek, plus a soup of the day. I’m quite partial to Stash’s zurek, a soup with which few non-Poles are familiar. Zurek is based on fermented rye dough, which lends it an opaque, greyish-beige colour and a pleasantly sour, savoury taste, not unlike that of miso. At Stash’s, your bowl of zurek contains a generous helping of robustly flavoured chunks of smoked Polish sausage.

More festive Polish dinners often start with little herring canapés washed down with freezer-chilled vodka—or wódka (“little water”) to us Poles—both of which Stash provides. You must under no circumstance consume one without the other—herring and wódka together are more than the sum of their parts. As the old adage stipulates, you must drink wódka when you eat herring or the fish will think the dog ate it.

To me, the highlight is the pierogi (that’s the plural; pieróg is the singular), which are probably the best anyone who hasn’t been to my góralka grandmother’s house in Zakopane could hope to have. The shells are thin and not doughy in the least, while the fillings, which include cheese (by far my favourite), meat and cabbage, all burst with flavour. You get eight of these tasty dumplings per order, and you can request to have any combination of the three fillings. That being said, most of the other mains are, in my experience, quite grandmother-licious.

Though not the cheapest Polish eatery, at $10–$15 for mains, you can still expect Stash to pleasantly fatten your belly without excessively slimming your wallet. If you’re having trouble committing, you should consider the “Primer” table d’hôte ($29), which will get you a soup, a salad and an assortment of pierogi, a dollop of bigos (a tangy stew of cabbage, meat, sausage and mushrooms), a placek (potato pancake) and a krokiet (meat and vegetable rolled into a thin crepe and subsequently breaded and fried).

There are some more ostentatious options, namely the roast duck and wild boar tables d’hôte ($39 and $30). I have tried the former and found it to be far less gratifying than the more humble aforementioned options.

No self-respecting Polish grandmother would let you leave her table without tasting her homemade pastries. So, to ensure the completeness of your Polish grandmother experience, be sure to try one of Stash’s pastries. I’m especially partial to what the menu calls “fruit squares”—buttery short crusts with tangy fruit fillings, such as apple or plum, which always come topped with a generous dollop of unctuous, lightly sweetened sour cream.

Owner Ewa Bujnicka, a friend of my family, has been at Stash’s helm for three decades. Ms. Bujnicka is retiring and will soon be handing the reins over to one of her employees, which will hopefully assure continuity. I salute Ms. Bujnicka for having lovingly provided those who miss their Polish grandmother and those who never had one the opportunity to savour truly authentic Polish food.