A while back, Cathy made “a short trip” to the Wrocław IKEA store while I was teaching my Saturday morning class at school. Well, the bus ride alone to IKEA is about 45 minutes, at which point, you still have to navigate the clever “you-must-walk-through-every-display-and-look-at-ALL-the-things” layout of the store. And then take the same bus back. So, a “short trip”? I figured I was on my own for lunch.
Luckily, we had discovered a fun little neighborhood pizza joint just around the corner from the Biedronka grocery store not long before:
“Contadina” is “peasant woman” in Italian, and the shop seems to live up to its Italian roots. The women who run the cash register speak Polish, and Italian—but no English. The pizza maker—they have only one, and he is a master—speaks only Italian. And the shop also sells cheeses and olives—good stuff.
As you might have been able to guess (thanks to my intermittent Polish lessons, no doubt), the rest of the sign—Oryginalne Produkty Włoskie (oh-rigg-in-AL-ne pro-DOOK-tih VWOSS-kyeh)—means “Orignal Products of Italy.”
Sadly, it turned out that their pizza maker was on vacation, and there would be no pizzas until early February. So much for my lunch plan.
Yesterday, on the way home from yet another Saturday morning class, it occurred to me that, with Cathy in Paris (she’s there with our nephew Blayde, but that’s another story which she may get around to posting about here, eventually), I was on my own for lunch again.
And… He’s back!
This is thin thin pizza, the kind they slice into four giant pieces that you fold up to eat. I ordered (in Polish!), and then had to rely on a bilingual Polish bystander to translate the clerk’s reply. And then I sat and watched my pizza being rolled out and baked just for me. Good stuff!
That’s the Romana—tomato sauce, anchovies, and capers. (My Polish must not be quite as good as could be hoped, since I thought I had ordered a Four Meat pizza to go with it, but came home with a Four Cheese instead). Or maybe I got someone else’s pizza—either way, it was still plenty tasty!
Just for some idea of prices around here compared to the U.S., my two take-home pizzas cost 72 złoty (roughly $18). There are plenty of cheaper food options around, too, though inflation has DRAMATICALLY increased prices for things over the past year or so, at least according to what we’re told by people who have lived here longer.
But I guess I can afford 72z for a couple of pizzas now and then!
The pizza looked good!