Very Slow Polish Food

There is apparently a strong Polish community in Edinburgh, and its presence is especially felt on Gorgie Road. It immediately struck me, as it was my usual route to work, how many Polish stores there were, and how varied and specialised they were too.

A typical corner store, only, with the strictly Polish assortment of products, it could just as well be on a corner ofone of the streets in my home town.

A Polish Delicatessen, specialising in cold cuts (mmm).

And finally, even a Polish hair salon! Considering the importance of small talk therapy in dealing with emigration stress, totally understandable.

I have never taken advantage of those Polish-ness opportunities, apart from a single dash when I was hard pressed for pickled herring and beer. However, the finishing of my internship has given other people an idea of tapping into the Polishness resource.

The leaving celebrations started early, and already six days before I am due to move back home from Edinburgh my colleagues organised a leaving lunch. Maximise the enjoyment potential I say! One of my collegues is of Polish descent, so it was his idea for us all to convene in a tiny Polish restaurant down Gorgie Road, Cafe Kleofas, which I have passed a thousand times, but never tried. Normally open onlyin the evenings, the kind cook and owner opened it for lunch especially for our eight-strong group. Everything was freshly done - apparently that morning. We barely fitted in the tiny space, but we were made to feel very special, and the food was gorgeous.

Chicken soup with thinly sliced pancakes, perfect and just so, peppery and warm, such a home dish I was instantly homesick.

Kubus, a carrot and fruit juice loved or at least well known by all Poles, but I had to explain the complex history of Bobofruty to my foreign friends.


My neighbours' dish - kopytka (a sort of gniocchi) with pork in a wild mushroom sauce. Again, a traditional favourite.

The wise ones had pierogi, which were beutifuly soft, I truly believe they were made on the same day.

No Polish dinner is complete without a massive slab of cake, and the cheescake did not dissapoint. At the end we could barely move, let alone squeeze out of the tiny interior; a civil service working lunch, it took as two hours on the dot.

And a very, very reasonable bill too!