Roff - Borsch, vodka and tears: food to drink with

Contents

This book is dedicated to my grandmother,
Mary Davidson, who lived a hundred years
and always spoke her mind. And to everyone
who has eaten, drunk, worked at or owned
Borsch, Vodka and Tears.

Its a bit strange the first time you enter. There are bartenders and a bar, but theyre hidden away from the public view by a forest of flowers and condiments, bowls of fruit and jars of spices. The passage by the bar is so narrow and often gets so crowded that walking to the back of the restaurant requires an artful combination of contortion and acrobatics. The menus are replete with unpronounceable words, like gobki and dzigielwka. When you ask for your favourite drink, if it doesnt have vodka in it, or it does have an energy drink in it, the chances are that we dont have it.

Then, once you are seated, you can start to look around. The dark little room, more like an oversized hallway, glows orange by dim candlelight. During Earth Hour, the lights are dutifully switched off and it is only the bartenders, who need to use candles behind the bar, that even notice the difference. The worn tables and fittings are hand carved and built from Polish hardwood and slabs of stone. The strange posters on the wall are the works of Polish artists and promote theatre shows, ballet and opera. Waiters work their way towards tables, laden with dishes with strange names that turn out to be very approachable and hearty, if a little different.

The time soon comes when you must consider your choice of drink. Many people enter Borsch rather unimpressed with vodka. I fell into this category when I began working there. I didnt dislike vodka, but I thought it was a little boring compared to aged whisky or rum. Within a few weeks I was completely converted. I learned of a whole world of complexity reflecting the geographical origins and the base ingredients of the drink all this, just from drinking clear vodka! I also learned that there is vodka for every occasion, and if one shows even a shred of interest, the bohemian and rather eccentric staff at Borsch, Vodka and Tears will demonstrate a more erudite side of themselves and help guide your drinking experience.

It may seem odd, beginning with the tears, but that is the way the story of Borsch, Vodka and Tears began. Having endured hardship in their native land, the people that brought the little restaurant and bar into existence made their way to Australia. They found here the better life they had sought, but never lost pride in the rich culture of their homeland: the food, the music, the architecture, and the incredibly good vodka that has been produced there for centuries. Without their endurance, enterprise and passion for Polish civilisation, this story may never have been told. It seems fitting that its name is derived from this old proverb about drinking Polish absinthe, between what is good in a life of passion and what seems inevitable, though I maintain the saying is a euphemism for people becoming intolerable when they have too much to drink!

On 6 January 1959 in Olsztyn, Old East Prussia, Andrzej Kaczmarski, future owner of Borsch, Vodka and Tears, was born. At this time, Poland was enjoying more stable conditions than it had since the beginning of World War II. Stalin had died six years earlier and his rather genocidal and paranoiac style of communist rule had been moderated throughout the Eastern Bloc. As was encouraged by the government of the day, both Andrzejs parents worked, in their case, for the railroads.

While there are many negative things to be said about the communist era (and many of those things are frequently said by Andrzej himself) there is no doubt that the regime did an effective job of rebuilding a country devastated by war. The rail network, as a result, is excellent as far back as the 1970s the line between Warsaw and Krakw had tracks that could handle trains travelling at 180 kilometres per hour. Art, literature and music, though subject to censorship by the state, also continued to flourish. But perhaps most important of all, there was always good vodka to drink.

The communist regime, after having wrested large landholdings from their wealthy owners and redistributing them to peasant farmers, met vehement resistance when they attempted to consolidate the agricultural industry into large farming collectives. Consequently, most Polish food was organically produced according to traditional methods by individual farming families on small plots of land. Production was highly seasonal. In spring, radishes appeared first, then cucumbers and spring onions. After the long hard winters, fresh vegetables, full of vitamins, seemed like a crunchy orgy of culinary delight. Summer brought strawberries and then cherries. In early autumn came apples and pears. People would forage in forests for wild mushrooms and return with a glut of porcini and other varieties that could be dried and stored.

It was common practice to make the most of this abundance, preserving foodstuffs for the coming winter. As a six-year-old boy, Andrzej has fond memories of spending days pickling dill cucumbers and stirring pots of sour cherries or angelina plums and sugar. Fruits were made into jam or preserved in Spirytus, yielding delicious-flavoured vodkas. Every home had a barrel into which layers of shredded cabbage and salt would be packed and fermented into sauerkraut. Some would make kabanosy sausages to hang. Even still, the range of ingredients under communism was limited and it was difficult to follow recipes from pre-war cookbooks, where half of the ingredients were unavailable.

The traditional food of Poland is quite time consuming to prepare. All parents were encouraged to work and in the Kaczmarski family things were no different. As a result, canteens providing food in factories and workplaces would also sell meals to workers on their way home to feed to their families. The quality of these preparations was not particularly high. Small, privately run kitchens that provided something akin to home cooking were a better option, but private enterprise was technically illegal under communism and regarded as thievery, and these kitchens operated at their peril. Even though the meals from these restaurants were much better than the canteens, businesses struggled to make ends meet, especially in later years when the country fell on hard economic times.

Government subsidies kept food prices low, and ultimately unsustainable, throughout the 1960s. Under these conditions the farming industry had failed to grow, while the population was fast approaching pre-war levels. When, in 1970, the government removed the subsidies altogether, food prices skyrocketed by as much as 60 per cent and there were riots across the north of Poland where government forces opened fire on civilian protesters.

As a result, Poland borrowed heavily in the early 1970s from Western nations, ostensibly to build industry. The results were manifold. Traditional farmers markets started to disappear, replaced by large supermarkets, while Western imports became available for the first time since the war. At vast expense, Poles could now enjoy fresh tomatoes or lemons in winter. Andrzej remembers vividly how people would think nothing of lining up for three hours just to get some fresh lemon for their tea as it had been so long since they were readily available.