Now where do I go for Gołąbki?

I suppose I could make them myself.  After all, a gołąbki (usually pronounced in the U.S. as galumpkee) is essentially ground meat (pork or lamb) wrapped in cabbage leaves.  How hard can that be?  That’s not the point, though.  I just feel the need to mark the passing of another neighborhood ethnic grocery store – Krakus Market in Philadelphia’s Port Richmond neighborhood.

Philadelphia is a big city and most of it consists of neighborhoods, many with a strong sense of ethnic/national identity.  For people who live in the suburbs or rural areas, it’s sometimes hard to get this but in big cities, this sense of belonging to an ethnic group/tribe is a big deal.  For example, Allegheny Avenue is one of the major streets in Port Richmond.  In a five block stretch of Allegheny Avenue there are three Roman Catholic Churches – one for Polish-Americans, one for Irish-Americans, and one for German-Americans.  Recently the German church was closed and those of a German background now need to worship with the Irish, but St. Adalbert’s still maintains a firmly Polish culture.  Many of the parish notices use Polish words, there are  a handful of Polish delis and restaurants near the church and banks, medical clinics, and insurance agencies will have window signs in Polish.

One of those business was Krakus Market, a small grocery store near St. Adalbert’s.  My true love (whose ancestry is Polish) and I discovered this neighborhood and Krakus Market a year or two after moving to Philadelphia.  We soon developed rituals of visiting the neighborhood during the Christmas season and before Easter to pick up some Polish specialties to help celebrate those holidays.  We’d pick up  kielbasa, kishka (blood sausage), dried mushrooms, chrusciki (fried dough with powdered sugar), pierogis (dumplings), gołąbki, and all sorts of foods that are traditional Polish cuisine or parts of Polish holiday celebrations. Every year we pull out this Easter lamb made our of sugar painted with food coloring as part of our Easter decorations.

But Krakus is closing.  After two generations of providing Philadelphia’s Polish-American community with foods from the old country, the family has decided to move on.  I wish them the best but this makes me sad.  I don’t know about where you live, but here in Philadelphia there is an amazing selection of ethnic food available.  There are easily a dozen Asian (meaning Chinese/Korean/Vietnamese/Laotian/Japanese maybe) grocery stores in the area, a handful of south Asian groceries, an African (although I don’t know what part of Africa is their specialty) grocery, and several Middle Eastern stores.  There must be hundreds of stores selling food from Mexico and south and central America. There must be at least a hundred stores selling high end Italian/Mediterranean foods.

But just try to find food from Sweden, or Russia, or Poland, or central Asia, or Greece, or Morocco, or Germany.  You can’t. Grocery stores serving active immigrant communities are plentiful but those serving immigrant communities who came a generation or two ago are not.  If there is no tradition of immigration, then it is certain to be no presence of grocery stores.  Why in the world would anyone specialize in foods and spices from Iran, Kazahkstan, and Afghanistan when there is little U.S. immigration from those countries.  It doesn’t matter, I guess, that the food is delicious.

I’m not saying that there is anything wrong with this.  Realistically, I can’t expect that someone is going to maintain a business serving a Hungarian community with the spices, herbs, meats, and dishes that a Hungarian community might expect when there is no Hungarian community.  If I want to cook something Hungarian, I’ll have to spend some time figuring out how to do it.  When it comes to cuisine from countries without a tradition of emigration to America, it becomes even more difficult.  I’ve yet to come across a good, reliable source of central Asian ingredients and in many communities, African groceries are essentially non-existent.

But I can be sad when stores like Krakus close.  Krakus was a connection to a different time when immigrants from Europe were transforming America.  Immigrants have always been transforming America and today we see that with people from Vietnam, central America, and India.  We should enjoy that and celebrate that, but that doesn’t mean that the contributions from Poland, Germany, and England are no longer relevant.

One of these days I’ll make my own gołąbki and I’ll check with my true love to see how “authentic” they are.  I could probably also make my own pierogis, but I’m guessing that chrusciki and babka are beyond my skill set.  I’lll just have to get used to knowing that we can’t just drive to Port Richmond for Polish groceries whenever we feel the need.