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“We’re Ukrainian and this food speaks to our heritage, since Polish food is adjacent to what we have at home, like how we enjoy perogies every Christmas,” says Bodde, just after she finished lunch with her family. Around them, empty dishes were scattered with potato pancake crumbs and tendrils of sour cream.

“This is such a cosy restaurant, with proper authentic food, and just being here reminds us of our relatives,” she adds.

Café Polonez is one of the few Polish restaurants dotting an area of pc28����that was once brimming with Eastern European bars, stores and eateries. Since 1981, when Irena and Zygmunt Zychla bought the restaurant from its owners — who didn’t solely focus on just Polish dishes — the menu has been serving cabbage rolls, sauerkraut and mushroom perogies, veal schnitzel, goulash, and borscht (both red and white) to customers who range from Polish-Torontonians to curious downtown foodies to out-of-town visitors looking for a nostalgic meal.

The space is bright and long, with a bar promoting Polish beer cans situated in the middle of the restaurant, and a large mural of Warsaw taking up most of the brick wall at the back. Framed photos of an illustrated eagle crest, the official coat of arms of Poland, hover above tables hugging the north and south walls. The smell of placek po wegiersku (a folded pancake filled with pork goulash and potatoes) and leczo warzywne (a paprika-heavy beef stew) waft across the dining area.

Patrick Front, the 41-year-old grandson of the Zychlas who acts as general manager, says the menu hasn’t changed much after four decades. “That kind of consistency keeps people coming back, so much so I’ve seen customers who have been regulars bring their kids and introduce them to our food,” he says.

There’s a savoury richness in the flavour profiles bursting from dishes such as the cabbage rolls, which are nicely complemented with dill, and the white borscht, as it gives off a miso-like aftertaste. The perogies are firm and didn’t skimp on the fillings, while the sernik cheesecake is light and fluffy, similar to Japanese cheesecake.

The restaurant goes through about 1,000 pounds of potatoes and 350 pounds of beets each week. One unique requirement for employees? They must speak both Polish and English.

“So many customers are Polish, they expect to communicate in that language, and we’ve been lucky to find some really great staff at the front and back who speak Polish, and in the past few years we have also hired Polish-speaking Ukrainians, some of whom left their country during the conflict with Russia,” says Front.

With such deep roots in Eastern Europe, Café Polonez’s reputation gained momentum in the 1980s when Irena Zychla, a newcomer to pc28����from the small Polish town Radom with her husband and daughter Sofia, was hired to work as a cook at the restaurant. Young Sofia took a waitress job. Three months later, the owner offered to sell them the place, and they pooled together their savings, primarily earned from running a tannery business in Poland, and bought the restaurant. Years later, they purchased the building.

“We expanded the menu to include more Polish and Eastern European dishes, many of which were my mom’s own recipes,” says Sofia.

As a teenager, Front got to know how to operate a business by at first helping out as a busboy and then prepping the ingredients and even trying his hand at making perogies. “Before we had a machine helping us make them, it can be very labour intensive,” he recalls. Today, Front is busy with sourcing ingredients from vendors, managing staff schedules, and even waiting tables if the restaurants get crowded.

Over the decades, as Roncesvalles established itself as a hub for Polish businesses, Café Polonez drew in newcomers freshly emigrated from Poland — a clientele that reflected the character of a neighbourhood once rich with Polish stores, many of which have since disappeared. “It’s gentrification, what can you say?” says Front with a shrug.

Growing demand forced them to renovate 20 years ago by expanding the back area of the space to include more seats, replacing what was then the kitchen. Updated flooring and tables and chairs also gave the restaurant a refreshed look.

They’ve entertained a range of Polish dignitaries over the years, but most notably to both Front and his grandmother is when Lech Wałęsa, then the Polish president, visited Café Polonez in the early 1990s. Irena was suffering from a broken hand and didn’t go downstairs to greet him but instead Walesa and his security guards headed upstairs to gift her some flowers and a sweet compliment. “He really loved the tripe soup he had, which has always been a favourite for our customers,” Front says. “And my grandmother was amazed at this gesture.”

Today, Sofia still runs the restaurant, now with help from her children. “We are trying our best to uphold and preserve the legacy that my parents began all those years ago.”

Front, when asked about what he finds fulfilling about managing his family business, begins to choke up before he answers, tears welling up in his eyes. “A lot of people keep the legacy going from what their grandparents accomplished,” he says, “with totems like paintings and jewelry and, of course, memories. But we have an actual bricks-and-mortar building to say, ‘This is our family, this is our history.’”