Czekolada na gorące, or The Wedel Express

I would be remiss in my assessment of life in Warsaw not to comment on the quality of Polish hot chocolate.

Three words: O My God.

We were first introduced to czekolada na gorące during our very first weekend in Warsaw. The rain and 38 degrees that greeted us on January 30 quickly turned into snow, daily snow, white and fresh and constant. So on the weekend we ventured into Łazienki Park, just fifteen minutes walk from our apartment, which is the largest park in Warsaw and features one of the 18^th century royal palaces, the “Palace on the Isle.”

Also to be found in the park are squirrels, many many squirrels, of the Polish variety – reddish, or in some cases quite red, with bushy tails and oddly furry ears. 

These squirrels are rather tame, and one of the favorite leisure occupations of the residents of Warsaw is to walk through the park with nuts and feed the squirrels. Orzechi włoskie, walnuts (for some reason called “Italian nuts” in Polish) are sold in the park, and people bring their own hazelnuts, peanuts etc. etc. We have witnessed utterly adorable scenes of three and four-year-olds with grandparents in tow, trying to get the squirrels to approach. I have also felt the danger of making eye contact with those squirrels when you don’t have any nuts – they do approach, and they have very clear expectations.

The peacocks are another bonus of Łazienki Park – beautiful, bold, and not above eating a crust of dried bread when that’s all I have. In addition, scattered throughout the park are birdhouses, and visitors keep them filled with seed, bread crusts, and so on, and we’ve seen gorgeous little birds feeding at them throughout the winter.

One snowy day I had an authentic conversation with a gentleman who was persuading a bird to eat seed out of his hand:

Me: Przepraszam, co to jest?

Gentleman: To jest sójka.

Me: Bardzo piękny. Dziękuę.

I wrote the word down on my hand and went home to look it up: a European jay. I felt privileged to have seen it up so close.

But to get back to that first visit to the park: it was chilly. Quite chilly. And we not only discovered that on Sundays at the Palace on the Isle we could attend free chamber music concerts at noon, filling a side ballroom and feeling genuinely sophisticated as we listened to the music and examined the bas-reliefs, candelabras, classical statues and fancy moldings of the royal palace, something we proceeded to do most Sundays throughout the winter.

We also discovered a small cafe, with an outdoor window as if to sell ice cream. On that day in early February they were selling freshly pressed waffles with whipping cream and …  czekolada na gorące.

Polish hot chocolate is not like American hot chocolate. It is quite literally liquid chocolate that is best consumed with a spoon. We couldn’t believe it.

O My God.

It was a revelation, and I began to understand why people worship on Sundays.

Our second important experience of czekolada na gorące was on an even more snowy day in Łódź.

I’ve written about Łódź – our first real exploration with the children of a site commemorating the Holocaust. The Radegast Station gave us a real and concrete sense of the Jews of Łódź and beyond who had departed from there to the death camps. It was the first time I realized just how important it is to use the word „murdered” when talking about the Holocaust. Utterly devastating to think of 300,000+ Jews, a real community, exterminated in a few short months.

After an experience like that, it was good to discover the life-affirming renovation that is Manufaktura – a campus of former textile factories that has been turned into a shopping mall and museum site, a place for contemporary residents of and visitors to Łódź to celebrate what was once there – a vibrant artistic community, a successful and wealthy industrial city. 

This is perhaps not as true as it once was, now that the Jews are gone, but today Manufaktura is a destination, certainly more popular than the memorial to the Jewish Victims at Radegast Station. (This is worth discussing. But not now.)

On that cold day at Manufaktura we discovered Wedel, and it may have changed our lives. We had known about the chocolates one can buy in the store, the Warsaw chocolates as opposed to the Krakow-produced Wawel chocolates. And in theory we knew of the pijalnia. But we hadn’t been there yet, and Wedel has to be experienced to be believed.

The fresh-baked bread and croissants, the freshly squeezed orange juice, the salad with salmon, and of course the cappuccino were amazing. But the czekolada na gorące was beyond description. We were struck dumb, which doesn’t happen very often, and my son was looking into opportunities to wash dishes in the kitchen so that he never needed to leave there again.

And then we returned home to Warsaw and discovered that the 107 bus, which departs from outside our apartment building, is really the Wedel Express.

Wedel, like all successful businesses in Poland, is now a chain. But the original, very first Wedel Chocolate Shop is on Szpitalna, just at the other end of the 107 route. 

These chocolatiers really know what they are doing, and let me assure you that the liquid chocolate they dispense in the butter-yellow dining room of the cafe, with portraits of Wedel fathers and sons lining the walls, is unparalleled.

I will wait for another post to complain about the fact that the Wedel matriarch, who ran the business for many years after her husband’s death, was for some reason not featured prominently on the dining room walls.

For now, just imagine it – liquid chocolate. Biała, klasyczna, albo gorzka. White, classic, or bitter.

OMG.

The Wedel Express. We haven’t taken it very often, but it is representative of why we are turning into our own nightmare. Fat, happy Americans.