Bar mleczny
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Bar mleczny (Polish for Milk bar) is a typically Polish kind of a fast food restaurant. It was invented by the communist authorities of Poland in the mid-1960s as a means to offer cheap meals to people working in companies that had no official canteen. Its name originates from the fact that until the late 1980s the meals served there were mostly dairy-made and vegetarian (especially during the martial law period of the beginning of the 1980s, when meat was rationed).
During the post-war years, most restaurants were nationalized and then closed down by the communist authorities. The idea was to provide all people with cheap meals at the place of their work. Although, unlike in Soviet Union or many other states of the Soviet Bloc, Poland never saw emergence of meal factories, each large company, school or university had a canteen. At times the price of the meals served there was included in the salary. However, there was also a large group of people working in smaller firms that had no canteen at their disposal. Because of that, during the reign of Władysław Gomułka, the authorities created a net of small restaurants based on the idea of self-service and fast food. The meals served there were subsidized by the state and were available to almost all citizens.
Apart from raw or processed dairy products, the milk bars also served egg (omelet or egg cutlets), cereal (kasza) or flour (pierogi) based meals. After the communist system was overthrown and the shortage economy was over in Poland, most of the milk bars went bankrupt as their place was taken by normal restaurants. However, some of them were preserved as part of the relics of the welfare state as a means of support of poorer parts of the Polish society. Currently every major Polish city has at least one milk bar somewhere in the city centre. They are all subsidized by the state (an amount of 20 millions złoty a year is often cited) and often by city authorities as well. They are popular among elderly people, pensioners, homeless, but also students or university professors.
Because of subventions, the prices are considerably lower than in any other bar, fast food or restaurant. An average dinner consisting of three meals and a dessert costs usually less than 10 złotys there, as opposed to over 50 in an average restaurant. Paradoxically, although thought of as sort of a fast-food bar, modern milk bars still serve traditional meals of the Polish cuisine, which makes them an example of rather slow food restaurants.
