Ben Sixsmith is an English writer. He has written for Quillette, Areo, The Catholic Herald, The American Conservative and Arc Digital on a variety of topics including literature and politics.

Poland, like England, is not famed for its cuisine. You won’t find a lot of “Polish restaurants” scattered across Europe. Pierogi — those fat filled dumplings — are perhaps the only Polish food that has universal recognition.

This is unfair — but it must be said that it is somewhat understandable. Polish food, like British food, was developed to feed people working manually in the cold or underground. It is often hearty, filling stuff, not best suited to “small plates” and “tasting menus”. It is not always ideally described as “photogenic”.

Nor is it generally among the healthiest cuisines. Of course, it could be. You could have cucumber soup and a cabbage roll. But you could also have a warm afternoon in Reykjavik or a cool morning in Las Vegas. The average Polish lunch is likelier to include a breaded pork cutlet the size of your head.

Still, these are all quite superficial complaints? What about the taste?

Polish food has plenty of taste. Dig into a really nice bowl of barszcz and you’ll want to keep eating until your face is purple. If I had to pick one cheese to eat for the rest of my life I’d plump for smoky oscypek — a mountain cheese made of salted sheep milk that goes as well with cranberry jam as burgers go with chips.

Now, I must admit to something here — I’m an ethical vegetarian. This means I can’t taste a lot of beloved Polish dishes. There’s no point trying to make roulade out of tofu after all. Still, I’ve asked friends about meatier dishes and heard paeans to pork and ballads to beef that would bring a tear to an angel’s cheek. Poles love their pork cutlets — flattened, breaded and fried — or their kiełbasa — fat, rich sausages the length of your arm.

People who are prejudiced against Polish — and British! — food might think it is too simple and unsophisticated. Such food nerds need a list of ingredients the length of War and Peace to really appreciate a dish. But simplicity is not an antonym of sophistication. As simple as Polish food can look, it needs a lot of love and care. Bigos, for example — a stew based on sour cabbage and meat — takes hours to cook if it’s to have maximum flavour. That care extends to the gathering of ingredients and not just to their preparation. On colder, damper days, Poles are liable to head into the forests and start foraging for fungi. No, not for magic mushrooms — though there is a kind of magic to the process of choosing the fattest, tastiest wild mushrooms for stews and soups.

Polish cakes also deserve more than a mention. Sernik — Polish cheesecake — is the highest rated cake in the world on the travel guide Taste Atlas as I write. Sękacz — a traditional spit cake (as in cooked on a spit, not including it) — also makes the top ten. Frankly, it’s a sin and a crime that karpatka — a crispy, creamy cake resembling a mountain range — is not higher than twenty-eight. Be careful if you visit a Polish family for coffee, though, because you’re liable to be offered so much cake that you could double your bodyweight in a single sitting.

Poles love to drink as well as eat. The most iconic Polish drink, of course, is as powerful as Mariusz Pudzianowski. Vodka has given me a lot of good memories (and it’s taken a lot of good memories from me too). Perhaps it has more value in its place within a social ritual rather in some innate mixological sense. To be more blunt — it’s a lot of fun to drink with friends but it doesn’t taste great. Still, at its coldest and its purest it can be a pleasure in and of itself.

Poles love beers as well. I’m a simple man. I’m fond of cheerful lagers like Lech, Żubr and, especially, Tyskie — unmatched on a warm summer evening (or, indeed, a cold winter evening). Still, people who seek experimentation in their drinking can enjoy a wide range of Polish craft beers. Poles are getting more into wine too. As a son of the south-west in England, I just wish cider was more readily available. (If anyone with a spare few million wants to join forces on a new business, get in touch).

It would be remiss of me to end a piece on Polish food without mentioning its greatest challenge of all. If you really want the respect of a Pole there’s one thing you can do. No, not drink a glass of vodka. Eat a plate of flaczki.

What is flaczki? Well, it’s a kind of soup, made from the stomach lining of a cow or pig. I’ve never tasted it, for obvious reasons, but an English friend described it to me as being like “elastic band soup”. That might not be a great advert — but eat it and you’ll be appreciated.

And if you’re a vegetarian? Well, you can get “vegan flaczki” made of wild mushrooms. I wouldn’t mention to a Pole that you’re eating it though. They might react like an Italian waiter asked to bring ketchup to squirt across a margherita.