Best Polish vegetarian food and other general queries

> what is the best Polish vegetarian food to try in regular restaurants ( not specifically vegan ones)?
> How do we specifically indicate that there should be no meat when we want to try some street foods( if it is available ) in city centers? Is that normal if we specifically ask in this manner?

>Also is there a tip culture in restaurants and other places in Poland? where all is a tip expected after-service? Like for example, it might be expected at the end in free walking tours I believe. Just want to understand local practices.

>Also is there an indication in every food product in the supermarket if it is a pure vegetarian like a red dot on the product label indicating it is not vegetarian and a green dot indicating its vegetarian when buying from supermarkets ....

In most of the country tips tend to be pretty small... mostly just round up the bill a bit if paying by cash (no more than 10 per cent).

Kraków might be a bit more tip oriented (Austro-Hungarian heritage and lots of tourists).

Poland is not easy for vegetarians (esp for those who don't know Polish)..

Thank you Mafketis for this info! Much appreciated!

Vegetables are very much a side dish in Polish cuisine but as a main course you could have pierogi stuffed with mushrooms and cabbage. There are a few different kinds of dumpling that don't contain meat but the range of fillings is pretty limited. There are also some soups like barszcz czerwony, a beetroot soup and mushroom soup. Then are a few potato dishes like krokiety (potato croquettes basically) but once again, the filling in them tends to consist of cabbage and mushroom.


Just ask for the food 'bez mięsa' - that's pronounced 'bez mee-eng-sa'.


If there is I've never noticed it :)

A lot of these soups will be based on meat broth...

And things like little bits of skwarki (little bits of fried pork skin) might be dribbled over otherwise vegetarian dumplings (this happened to a friend who explicitly said 'no meat'... he didn't say 'bez skwarek'... so.....).

But this was a while ago and vegetarianism is a bit more known now. Even Biedronka (largest grocery chain) has vegetarian and vegan products (look for labels like wege, wegański).

There used to be a vegetarian restaurant chain "Green Way" but I haven't seen any lately.

Finally, it should be remembered that in living memory food was not plentiful in Poland (no one starved but having food required effort and forethought in a way that's not an issue now) so the idea of cutting things out of your diet is still pretty suspect to the older generation.

That's true, I should have mentioned that. I suppose it depends on how strictly vegetarian one is. If you're vegan it would be a complete 'no, no' of course. It's possible to make those soups using a vegetable stock and nowadays Polish recipes usually give that option but the restaurant probably just uses whatever is cheapest or what they have to hand on any given day.


Oh God, yes! That's true too. But if you order vegetarian pierogi, they sometimes serve the bacon bits and onion on a side plate.


There are quite a few vegetarian restaurants in Warsaw and of course there's always things like Chinese or Indian which will have more vegetarian dishes.

There are some where I am too, and a couple of vegan restaurants (maybe more since that's more fashionable now) as well. So it's not like the 90's where people (who remembered ration cards) looked at people rejecting meat as if they were not quite right in the head....

There is the whole no-meat Friday tradition still observed by some (though fewer and fewer). Is that still a think in Ireland? What about Christmas Eve?

Please don't take the thread off topic

Really great information Atch and Mafetkis! Very valuable tips to understand the food culture! Definitely, I ll try some veggie dumplings!

If God made me a cow, I would be a vegetarian. Vegetarians, like tree huggers, are freaks. If they were normal they would be mostly vegetarians.

Luckily, for most, it's a phase that passes.

BTW, are there any vegetarian weightlifters?

Novichok, I have been a lifelong vegetarian ( not a vegan ) though for a few years included lots of Eggs as well .... so my diet includes lots of milk, milk products like yoghurt, cheese, cottage cheese. I used to lift weights at Gym as part of my workouts ( now am more into bodyweight workouts due to pandemic) but am not a professional. I have done lots of deadlifts, squats, and bench presses.

There are people that don't eat meat and then that are the nuts who don't eat meat as a statement. These same people don't buy leather shoes and don't want to have children - you know, carbon footprint.

And there are people that queue for a tin of szproty at 6am to have with their rock hard bread and last years ogorki. Hearty breakfast before a day of paid trolling

@Novichok. I am not against people who eat meat and not preaching anything here. I just shared my diet thinking it was more of a question from you


. Probably I didn't understand the context of your conversation/sarcasm/question. May be am just lost here. Just want to keep things related to my original post and already got some answers from Atch and Mafketis related to it. Thank you all.

but there are some posters who are against any thread that isn't about them and do their best to remedy that.... it's best to just ignore them...

In some restarurants you may still come across old term for vegetarian- jarskie.

Be careful though as I've seen scrambled eggs wilt bacon listed as that.

I feel nothing but sorrow for you.
Eating must be so painful.......
Said a complete carnivore......
Vegitarians and Vegans are free to eat boring food as they wish.
But please do not preach to the rest of us like radical muslims or born again christians.....

I eat a lot of meat daily. I do realise I have to supplement it with veg and fruit to achieve our fave balance in nature.

Here is my daily summer portion of veg which I eat raw coz they are the best in such form.

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@pawian

The radishes and spring onions are fine, but where is the meat or fish?

Maybe he's gone vegetarian?

@Miloslaw, @Alien, I don't want to be mean, but reading doesn't hurt :)):

Here you are - a lunch/dinner without meat or fish is a lunch/dinner lost. I need high calorie food to feel full for a few hours when I am busy at work, either at school or in the fields.

The first pic shows a fish fillet, pork chop, fava beans and lettuce straight from the field - I didn`t even have time to cut off their roots.

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