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Pod Orłem

by Evie Nicholson














My grandmother sends me down to the Polish corner-shops on Hanger Lane.
There are five Polski skleps dotted around the North Circular roundabout, each varying in the quality of their


Filo pastry

Ajvar

Kaymak


I make sure I go to the right one for each ingredient. My grandmother is Serbian, not Polish, but that doesn’t matter. These spaces cater to the entire Eastern European diaspora. Aleksandra who works at the Filo Pastry sklep tells me we’re all the same, bound together by a century of communism and a love of spirits. Even as a third-generation Slav, sauerkraut runs through my veins. My grandma is more jingoistic, but she can’t afford to be picky in W5.

I am homesick in Cambridge and longing for the wet motorways and Polski skleps of Ealing. Packed rows of wafer biscuits, pork wrapped in twine, and tubs of brined cheese. I type “slavic” into Google Maps and run along a b-road for three miles. Eventually, I reach Pod Orłem, which translates to “Under the Eagle”. It’s also on a roundabout. It smells like sweet wheat and cold cuts. The wooden shelves are colorful and stacked to the ceiling. The woman behind the counter points me toward the heavy jars of pickles and marinated peppers. I run my finger along their cold, swollen surfaces and notice the shop’s white light caught in the glass.

In Serbia, pickling is called zimnica. Every September, my grandma crams kilos of cabbage, beetroot, and peppers into sterilized wooden barrels to carry us through the cold months. The barrels are left at the bottom of the garden to rot and sour under lock and key.

I deliver my mass-produced zimnica to the till. Behind the counter, Serbian rakiya sits next to Russian erotic magazines and Orthodox icons. I think about just how nondenominational these skleps are. My grandma would despair.

In 1826, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin wrote, “Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.” I don’t speak Serbian, I don’t follow the Julian calendar, and my grandma has not visited Serbia since 1990. But I know how to tell good avjar from bad and how much honey to put in my rakiya. I make zjito with my grandma for Saint’s Day. We get our ingredients from the Polski skleps on Hanger Lane.


The reviews for Under the Eagle say things like:

“Coming here feels like home

BEST PIEROGIS OUTSIDE OF MY HOMETOWN

Everything you need to be Polish!”


The dinner table has always been an imagined community for the displaced and uprooted. And as London gentrifies itself, the dinner table grows. The W5 Yugoslav Cultural Center is converted into a yoga studio, so Hanger Lane’s Polski skleps import more and more. Their vibrating freezers, mottled vinyl floors, and rows of Milka chocolate continue to welcome me in with open arms.

MANY THANKS TO THE
ISSUE 3  CONTRIBUTORS












MANY THANKS TO THE
ISSUE 2  CONTRIBUTORS












MANY THANKS TO THE 
ISSUE 1  CONTRIBUTORS


 PARIS LONDON COPENHAGEN LAKE COMO PORTO VILNIUS RIGA 

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