Eating and Drinking
Poles take their food seriously, providing snacks of feast-like proportions for the most casual visitors, and maintaining networks of country relatives or local shops for especially treasured ingredients - smoked meats and sausages, cheeses, fruits and vegetables. The cuisine itself is a complex mix of influences: Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, German and Jewish traditions all leaving their mark. To go with the food, there is excellent beer and a score of wonderful vodkas. Once, if you wanted a really good meal in Poland, you had to hope for an invitation to someone's house. Now, however, with the moves towards a market economy, the country's fast-growing number of restaurants - most of which specialized in ungarnished slabs of meat during the communist era - are looking up. In the cities at least, there's now a distinctly Western spread of places to eat and a cosmopolitan range of cuisines. What is  © 2003 by Rough Guides Ltd. as trustee for its Authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved. Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd. Buy the book here!
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undeniable still is that eating out is a bargain, with splendid meals available for under GBP10/US$14 a head. Drinking habits are changing, too. Poles for years drank mainly at home, while visitors stuck to the hotels, with such other bars as existed being alcoholic-frequented dives. In recent years, though, something of a cafe-bar culture has been emerging in the cities, and though the old drinking dens survive, you'll find plenty of choice for a relaxing, unthreatening night out.
Your Tips For Poland
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