Zapiekanka first appeared in Polish bars in the early seventies when the First Secretary of the Polish United Workers’ Party, Edward Gierek, bought a licence to produce baguettes from the French. Gierek spent most of his youth in France and in Belgium, where he and his family worked in mineries, and apparently considered the baguette both tasty and practical. Poles quickly adapted the recipe and put some cheap, yet tasty ingredients on the buns: a duxelles of button mushrooms and onions (let’s use a fancy the name for this, why not! What it means, is just very finely chopped mushrooms and onions fried in a pan with a bit of oil), some type of cheese (often the semi-hard, smear-ripened Tilsit cheese, which we would usually call ‘yellow’ as opposed to ‘white’ cottage cheese) and a tomato sauce vaguely resembling American ketchup.
Polish Pizza, photo: Jakub Porzycki / Nur Photo / Getty Images What needs to be noted is that the seventies – sometimes referred to as the times of ‘social consumptionism’ or even ‘bigos socialism’ (historian Marcin Zaremba coined this term drawing the analogy between a dish that is satiating and satisfying despite the fact that the quality of ingredients used doesn’t have to be stellar, and a system that allows people ‘to get by’) – was a time of relative prosperity, openness to some foreign goods (Coca-Cola graced the Polish shelves in 1972), big investments (many of the Plattenbau buildings we see in Polish cities have been built at the time) and some freedom when it comes to opening private businesses. What we call ‘little gastronomy’ was one of the areas that flourished, and so Poles got to know the taste of fried chicken, pizza (curiously, the first pizzeria was opened in the Pomeranian town of Słupsk in 1975 and still operates today; in most places pizza actually meant a savoury waffle – gofr – with cheese and ketchup), sometimes even hot dogs. And yet meat, as we know, was scarce in socialist times: therefore it had to be substituted with more plentiful ingredients. Enter: button mushrooms.
The career of this humble ingredient, which is easy to grow and was defined by, yet not limited to zapiekanka: in Gorzów Wielkopolski buns filled with mushrooms and onions almost became a symbol of the city. While in Warsaw’s Nowe Miasto, in the politically incorrectly named Murzynek (Negro) bar, since the early 1970s a socialist version of spaghetti with mushrooms and cheese has been served as the very first pasta dish in the capital – and it’s still served today as a nostalgic reminder of the times gone by.
It’s worth mentioning that spaghetti is actually an important symbol of Gierek prosperity – as anthropologist, Justyna Jaworska writes in her award-winning book 'Piękne widoki panowie stąd macie'. O kinie polskiego sockonsumpcjonizmu (‘What a beautiful view you have, gentlemen. On the Cinema of Polish Soc-consumptionism’; available only in Polish), spaghetti appears in numerous films of the mid-seventies, including in Krzysztof Zanussi’s A Woman’s Decision (1975) and Stanisław Bareja’s Man – Woman Wanted (1973), where these foreign, long noodles pose a challenge to unaccustomed Poles. Just like ‘baguettes’, pizza and coke, they gave a glimpse of a world where everything was better. But let’s go back to the zapiekanka and to the Polish capital.
The Past & the Present of the Zapiekanka
Murzynek was one of the most popular spots for zapiekankas and other fast foods – apart from the restaurant with spaghetti, there was a ‘window’ where a few types of fast food were sold. The current owner said in an interview:
These mushroom buns were invented in the late 60s by mum mum and miss Nadarzyńska, who ran Murzynek at the time. Wieners for hot dogs were hard to buy, so they decided to fill the buns with scrambled eggs or mushroom sauce. The latter became a hit.
Yet people of Warsaw remember other legendary spots: a booth on Rutkowskiego St. (now Chmielna Street) next to the cinema Atlantic; booths on Emilii Plater Street next to where night buses stopped (considering zapiekanka is also the ultimate drunk food, the location makes total sense); plac Konstytucji, where soon also the Pol-Viet cuisine will be born; and further from the centre – a cart next to the Wilanów cemetery. Most of these examples of the so-called ‘little gastronomy’ – where later on, in the late eighties and early nineties also hot dogs and pretty questionable burgers started being sold, and where crispy fried onions and sliced pickled cucumbers reigned – has been replaced by ‘real’ American fast food. The grand opening of the first McDonald’s in 1992 is a symbol of this transition. Zapiekanki backed down, but they never disappeared, and lately they have been enjoying a comeback.
