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If you were to ask us to make a prediction as to which European country will become a dynamo for food and wine tourism over the course of the next decade, our answer would be… Poland.

beetroot, courgette and red onion quiche

Whilst other countries are ripping up vines because of collapsing demand for wine, the Poles are planting vines and opening vineyard tours at a rate of knots: the number of commercial winemakers has doubled in the last four years alone.

And if you chat to anyone who has had the luck to eat and drink and travel in Poland recently, then you hear the same sort of tale of enchantment we used to associate with folk who had come back from France and Italy back in the day … lovely people, excellent wines, incredible value for money, such a rich heritage, dynamic cities, great cooking from young chefs who are already winning stars.

That’s the tale being told, and that’s why you need to plan a trip to… Tralee.

Because Tralee has Rustic Boowa, and RB will give you a true taste of what to expect when you finally arrive in Krakow and Lublin.

Zaneta Labuz-Czerwien runs Rustic Boowa with her sister, Ilona Koscielniak, and their husbands, Piotr Czerwien and Pawel Koscielniak.

stew of chickpeas with house multi-seed bread

Zaneta first came to live and work in Kerry more than two decades ago, but the bakery didn’t debut until late-2020. They began with a tent and a table, then progressed to a food truck, and then found their premises in the Clash area of Tralee, and by December 2021 the bakery and café was up and running. A year later they had their first Gold Medal at the Blas awards in the bag for their long-proving bread, a tradition they have carried on each year, making the short trip down to Dingle to collect more gongs for their baking.

The café is a charmer, a room with quiet personality that has been achieved with good taste and a small budget. The hand-chalked greeting in the entrance sets the tone, which is welcoming and nurturing: “Welcome to Rustic Boowa!!! 2 sisters and our husbands who began in our kitchen and decided to share our traditional baked goods learnt from our grannies and made with a modern twist.”

The cooking has that hand-made-by-someone-who-cares goodness: house-made soups, salad and quiches, and everything has a delighting unexpectedness: a quiche made with beetroot, courgette and red onion; a home-made pesto sandwich with courgette; a vegetable paté sandwich with onion, tomato and lettuce; a stew of chickpea, squash and kale; salad with fennel, snap peas and dates.

In her book, Polska: New Polish Cooking, the author Zuza Zak opens with a quote from Waldemar Zarski: “The most vital attribute of food is its placement precisely on the border between the world of nature and the world of culture.” That’s exactly where RB cooking lies: our beetroot, courgette and red onion quiche was sublimely earthy, the filling topped with strands of grated courgette, the sort of vegan cooking that few kitchens can master, whilst the stew of chickpeas was a beauty, served with two slices of the outstanding house multi-seed bread.

The room was jammers and even though we arrived reasonably early, several of the lunchtime specials were already sold out. Thankfully the strawberry bakewell was still available to pair with some McCabe’s coffee. Of course we raided the wine shelves before leaving, because Zaneta and the team have collated a series of lovely bottles.

~JMcK with photos by Samuel McKenna

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Rustic Boowa, Tralee