Bar Mleczny Pod Barbakanem

Bar Mleczny Pod Barbakanem is a milk bar at Mostowa 27/29, beside the Barbican at the edge of Warsaw's Old Town in Poland's Masovian region. It is handy for a cheap meal between sights, since the Barbican, the Old Town Market Square and the New Town are all within a few minutes' walk. As a milk bar (bar mleczny), it belongs to the Polish canteen tradition of simple, low-cost home cooking, and it is not a chef-led restaurant. The menu covers soups, cutlets, dumplings and sweet pancakes. The signature dishes are meat-filled pierogi (pierogi z mięsem) at around PLN 22, sour rye soup (żurek) at about PLN 12, and bigos, the slow-cooked hunter's stew of cabbage and meats, at around PLN 20. Żurek and bigos are among the dishes most often described as emblematic of Polish cooking, and a milk bar is a low-cost place to try them. The dining room is plain and practical, with simple tables and counter service, and it tends to fill with a mix of sightseers, local workers and pensioners. Noise is moderate to loud at midday. There is no dress code and no table service; diners order at the counter, pay, and carry their own trays. Drinks are modest, such as compote, tea and coffee, with no wine list. Reservations are not accepted and are not needed, although the queue can lengthen in summer when Old Town visitor numbers peak. The bar opens 8AM to 7PM daily, so it is slightly shorter in hours than some central milk bars and is best used for lunch or an early dinner. For visitors seeing the Old Town on a budget, Pod Barbakanem offers a filling meal at a fraction of the price of the Market Square restaurants a short walk away.