The Best Polish Restaurant in Buffalo by William Kowalski

August 3, 2019

The Best Polish Restaurant in Buffalo by William Kowalski

It’s August, and I needed something a little lighter to read.  This isn't high literature but it's a pleasant read, a family saga based loosely on the author's great-grandmother's life.  Aniela is a Polish farm girl who emigrates to the United States with her mother and sisters, to escape from her brutal father and brothers.  The exact type of abuse isn't stated, but there is a hint of sexual and physical abuse in addition to the women being treated like slaves.  Despite how hard she worked, Aniela loved her life in her small Polish town.  Her mother decides that they will settle in Buffalo, New York, since there is a large Polish community, and it's also smaller and less intimidating that Chicago, the other American city with a large Polish population.

Arriving in Buffalo, the four women find jobs through the Polish community, working hard to create a new life for themselves.  They are employed as house cleaners and laundresses, learning English, finding a place in their new community.  The work is hard, but they all worked hard in Poland, and they are paid fairly for their work and able to save for a house.

Their mother's most important possession is a crock of sourdough starter that she brings with her from Poland.  Aniela and her sisters continue to use and feed the starter, eventually starting their own bakery where they sell authentic Polish sourdough bread and rolls.  The bakery morphs into a famous Polish restaurant that supports the family for decades, until it fails and has to be sold, due to changes in the city's population, and food trends and tastes.

Although the story was interesting, it was disappointing in parts.  The author doesn't describe how the sisters' little bakery evolves into a restaurant (it would have been more interesting to hear about how the restaurant started and flourished through the years, rather than detailing Iggy's wife's sordid affair).  At the end of the book, the story just sort of stops, with Iggy's life in shambles:  the restaurant closes and his livelihood is gone; he is going to have to split the proceeds from the sale of the restaurant with his many cousins; he and his wife have split up and he has moved out.  There is a glimmer of hope that he will be able to start over, since the original sourdough starter has survived all these years, and so will Iggy.