Poor Warsaw. When American author P.J. O’Rourke wrote the travel book, Holidays in Hell, it was included alongside Lebanon, Nicaragua and Belfast and while they might still be struggling, Warsaw has moved on.

What was grey and sad is now stylishly mid-century modern, the obligatory pickles on pizzas has given way to prosciutto and I swear there are more bars than in Paris and both the attitude and the prices are better.

Now Brooklyn-cool reigns, with tattooed baristas perfecting a pour-over in front of graffiti-on-concrete murals.

True, Warsaw may not have the fairy spires of Prague or even Krakow, Poland’s second city, but what it lacks in pretty it makes up for in soul.

Street life

The Poles are a social lot; the weather is dire and when your flat is small, it is quite normal for parents to sleep on a divan in the lounge room while the children share the one and only bedroom, you want to get out.

There is the stroll down the appealingly named Nowy Swiat (New World Street) to the more phonetically-challenged Krakowskie Przedmiescie, a grand boulevard of 19th century mansions, petite palaces and statue-topped churches.

Every second place is now a bar or a restaurant and everybody is either drinking alcohol or slurping a deliciously melty ice-cream, depending on the time of day and the season. To the north, the Old Town offers old-world terraces as “tenements”, as the Poles call them, in sombre shades.

While you are marvelling at how architecturally uniform the whole area is, keep in mind that it was all completely rebuilt after World War 11, as the retreating Germans destroyed 85 per cent of the city in their hurry to depart.

The tenements of the Old Town with a market and bars at ground level. Photo: PX Here

Food

While not returning to the bad old days of pickles on everything, typical Polish food such as pierogi, the classic ravioli-like pads of dough stuffed with meat, cabbage or cheese have been lightened up for a new generation. At the other end of the spectrum, a huge and hugely popular chain of restaurants features food from … Egypt. Not surprisingly, it is called Sphinx.

In the Old Town, restaurants such as U Fukiera – run by the legendary Magda Gesler, the Heston Blumenthal of Poland – offer old-style comfort food at new-style prices but they are most likely to be populated with people from Illinois called Kozlowski.

Instead, head in the other direction to ul. Chmielna, a small pedestrian street where you can get either a flat white, or a cucumber and gin cocktail in a tenement bar. And who doesn’t love a cinema, the Atlantic, where you can also get a piece of rhubarb pie, even if the coffee is from a chain. Opposite, the Green Caffe Nero looks like your university lecturer’s lounge room and the Melbourne-style coffee and cake has Melbourne-style prices to match.

Polish bread is a thing of beauty, with a dense texture and chewy crust and two eat-in bakeries, Canela and Zywioly, are nearby. While Canela specialises in cinnamon scrolls dripping with icing, you can get a not-quite smashed avo at Zywioly. Good luck with pronouncing the name though.

Fluffy Japanese pancakes are on the same block, as are pho, pad thai and poke bowls. It makes the local pizza and sushi places seem positively dull.

No such fancy-pants foreign stuff as you head back to Nowy Swiat and the Bar Mleczny Familijny or Familiar Milk Bar, a holdover from the socialist times, when high-volume cafeterias offered hearty food to the masses. Zurek, a rye soup with egg is one of my favourites, as is rice with cream and strawberries.

Each of them comes with distinctly Soviet-era prices at just three or so dollars each. But don’t get too carried away with your Instagram moment, a lot of poor people still depend on places like this to eat.

Culture

You could almost argue that, in Poland, food is culture but they have lashings of the real stuff as well. Women dress up for the opera, it is strictly high heels, hosiery and a new ‘do, with older members of the audience preferring a fur.

The Wiekli Theatre (Grand Theatre) is all marble pillars and red velvet boxes but like the Old Town, it is a reconstruction and while it has a full program of ballet and opera, both Polish and general European, it takes a four-month summer break from June to October.

If you are there at that time, you will just have to make do with a free Chopin piano recital in park of the Lazienki Palace a short tram ride south.

Lazienki Park is great for a concert or just a stroll. Photo: Deirdre Smith

Even though I missed out on a ticket to the Wielki, I was still able to to see a performance by the Wiekli Ballet School in one of the auditoriums and a chamber music concert at the elegant Polin Jewish museum theatre for about $A30 a ticket.

And even if you are the type to usually give museums a miss, Warsaw’s are stirring stuff.

Devastation, war and systematic slaughter are all documented at a range of installations; the tiny, overlooked Warsaw Historical Museum, where old films show the comprehensive destruction of the city, the new and glossy Polin Jewish History museum that documents the comprehensive destruction of the city’s Jewish population, and the Warsaw Uprising Museum, which details the struggle against the Nazis in which another 200,000 people died.

The once-maligned Palace of Culture lit up for New Year celebrations. Photo: AAP

Architecture

Then we have the much lamented urban environment. But time softens all edges and the formerly-loathed Palace of Culture is now a Soviet Gothic treasure, with an arthouse cinema at its base and all around the city, where people once saw communist concrete, they now see mid-century minimalism.

In the heart of the city, the saw-toothed circular PKO Bank is a long-time meeting spot. Of people off to get an apple charlotte cake, no doubt.