Who Taught the Poles to Cook? Queen Bona, Victim of a Smear Campaign

We will never find out who introduced us to włoszczyzna. But we can answer a different question: why did Bona, of all people, become the face of changing manners and eating habits?

By Paweł Bravo

"Splitting a single pea four ways is not for me. The whole of nouvelle cuisine can be summed up in one sentence: nothing on the plate, everything on the bill." One of the greatest French chefs, Paul Bocuse, had the right attitude to toward food (though in the 1960s he did dabble in new-wave inventions, and some of his dishes from that period were about as digestible as Godard's films).

It was probably because he was even more Lyonnais than just "French." Lyon, after all, is the epicenter of the French tradition of serious eating (and that's by no means its only advantage over Paris). A merchant city par excellence, it has long sat at the crossroads of various influences, and that's one reason people eat exceptionally well there — meaning not just until they're full, but with a touch of sensual excess, as far as social status and the hardships of the times allow.