The most memorable taxi ride I’ve ever taken was a twenty minute drive to John Paul II International Airport in Poland. After an extended week spent lounging in the countryside suburbs of Gdansk, carousing through the bars and dance floors of Sopot, eating my way through most of Krakow and observing All Saint’s Day at Rakowicki Cemetery, I had parted ways with my friends, Polish and American alike.

I was three weeks into a three month journey from St. Petersburg to California. It was three hours to sunrise when the hostel attendant shook me awake. In silence, I showered, dragged my belongings to the lounge, and packed for the flight to Odessa. Soon enough, the cabbie phoned in his arrival. I gathered my things and stepped out into Poland’s first snowfall of the year.

For almost a minute I found myself lost in the drifting blanket of frost wrapping itself piece by piece around the hushed rooftops of historic Krakow. It was the kind of blessed moment that marketing agents must spend millions trying to commodify. A humbling melancholy lifted my feet into the taxi, and I spent the next twenty kilometers gazing upon the marriage of darkness and light through the windshield.

By the time I made it to the airport cafeteria, the few snowflakes I was able to collect had buried themselves in the fibers of my coat. They were probably the last I’d see in a long while, and I’m the kind of person who has a harder time bidding farewell to crystalline entities than to people. I placed my order and sat down for my final meal.

Zurek is the secret national soup of Poland. I didn’t know it existed until my first morning in Gdansk, where I expected to down a bowl of hot borsch but found only an enormous pot of white broth peppered with potato, cabbage, egg and carrots. In every restaurant thereafter I found that zurek outranked borsch on the menu and on the table, and with good cause: its rich stock, profiled in fermented rye and rounded out with buttermilk and assorted bits of meat, hits the palate with a soothing sourness seemingly crafted for the sole purpose of soup alliteration. If I fell in love with Poland, I measure my devotion by the spoonful.

Accordingly, a bowl of zurek would be my long kiss goodbye to the home of cabbage rolls and hip-hop loving Popes. I savored every globule of fat, every chunk of boiled potato and every scrap of kielbasa, wishing to one day have the same breakfast under the same snowy mantle. Only, I wouldn’t be alone at the airport terminal. I’d be sitting somewhere in Krakow alongside my friend Natalia, listening to her make fun of pigeons and wondering how the old man at the table behind her could possibly polish off his entire tray of bigos without becoming some kind of god.

That meal’s still a distant dream, but at a table for two in Greenpoint, Brooklyn I came as close I’ll get in the meantime. It was a brisk fall morning when I stepped into Lomzynianka, one of New York City’s most highly touted destinations for Polish cuisine. As I made my way through the alley between the restaurant’s two rows of tables, I brushed against two frantic Polish toddlers, who promptly spun around and screamed in some mix of glee and terror.

I was greeted by a father figure. The world of restaurateurs has many stock characters, but the father figure is one of the greats. He’s not the happiest man in the world, but makes a running for the most content. He’s not a master chef, but he’s married to one. He’s not all-knowing, but the nod of his head as he passes you the menu makes omniscience a laughable concept.

With the exchange of two words- “zurek” and “golabki”- we crafted a bond worthy of fraternal chemists in Warsaw: that which bridges food and place through the nourishment of memory. I was promptly served with the same nod and smile and set to work. The two preschoolers chased each other around their mothers at the other table. Each spoonful spread the warmth of Poland throughout my body. I traversed the distance of a year by living hand to mouth for three minutes. And, as I looked down at my empty bowl, I made a wish for snowflakes.

Lomzynianka
646 Manhattan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11222
718.389.9439

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under New York, Soup.