Warm winter, cold beer at Pod Wawelem

This year’s strangely warm winter encourages you to, among other things, take a walk around Planty Park.

If, by any chance, on such a walk you get hungry, there is certainly one place you should take into consideration. Its name is Pod Wawelem-Kompania Kuflowa, and it rests calmly, as the name suggests, near the foot of the Wawel hill.

An old red truck full of beer barrels greets the guests, and seems to warn them that they are about to enter a somewhat different dimension, and then it really happens. Going through the door seems like leaving the 21st Century and entering a slightly postmodern version of the beginning of the 20th.

The interior is designed as what appears to be a slightly humorous tribute to the Austro-Hungarian empire’s restaurants. It has several spacious rooms, each one with an original decoration. Parts of the kitchen can be seen through an internal window, showing that the staff has nothing to hide – and, indeed, nothing to be ashamed of.

Even a place seemingly as uninteresting as the rest room has been made with a touch of humor, with witty notes hanging on the walls here and there, advising the guests to “behave silently and with dignity” while inside, or reminding the “guests from the current Capital” of the “possibility to wash their hands.”

For some unknown reason, these notes hang only in the men’s room.
And what about the food? The name Kompania Kuflowa (The Beer Mug Company) suggests the most important drink – and indeed, beer is quite cheap and comes in large, two-pint mugs (12 zloty).
The meals are also quite large, and certainly not expensive, with most of the main courses costing from 19 to 30 zloty.

The menu includes mostly dishes from what was the Austro-Hungarian empire, but is not limited to them, so you can choose the plate-size Giant Schnitzel as well as oysters or an Argentinean steak.

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