Cleaner and more presentable than most "Milk Bars" in the city. Cheap Polish food for the people. Get the dish of the day plus a nice "koktail" of kefir and blended fruit. Also carrot juice is good.
Tasty little sandwiches (expensive though) with carefully-chosen ingredients. Delicious coffee. Flaky croissants. And a good view of Zwierzyniecka street.
Warm indoor courtyard with climbing greenery and a cafeteria-style assortment of vegetarian treats. Befriend the interesting painted victorian beasts! Take a baked potato from the wood stove.
Good soups, unhappy-looking servers forced to wear silly hats. Get a beer with your hearty polish food. Good selection of hot & filling favorites. Reasonable prices, good eavesdropping possibilities.
Hot beer with fresh pressed ginger is not to be missed in winter (no syrop here!). Homemade pierogi, plus other polish favorites, creatively done. The possibility to get a good hearty piece of meat.
A proper meal + wine for lunch (with the daily menu) surprisingly cheaply. French overtones. They hold wine tastings sometimes, but eating there is much cheaper than most places with wine tastings.
A little pricey for Kraków, but sincerely delicious curries and other Indian food favorites. Prepare to smile and soldier on in the face (sometimes) of a high level of server rudeness and misery.
For people who are serious about meat. Huge portions. Some foods are available on fire. Free shot of cherry vodka. Merrymaking expected. Cheap beer on mondays.
Good variety in their daily offerings, and good prices for this Czech / Argentinian place. Czech Hedgehog beer available. And a well-fried placek.
Slightly-battered brightly-colored interior, board games. They almost always play good music. Coffee or a beer during the day, and sometimes at night raucous fun breaks out.
BIG, CHEAP, and TASTY breakfast sandwiches in the morning bustle. Local beer, good music. A place to prepare for your day with a quick bite, or to begin a night out.
Cinema and gallery (sometimes) on floor 2, great relaxed pub on floor 1, dancefloor and cavernous space boasts relentless (and well-selected) DJ acts in the evening. All things to all people.
Venerable drinking spot in Kazimierz. You're lucky if you can find a table on a weekend evening. Dark, dim and relaxed. A place to bump into friends or strangers, and to forget that there is a sun.
Another old, old favorite busy at almost all times. Candles, stone and brick walls, cavelike chambers. A venue for bands downstairs.
White brick walls, nice old polish posters on the walls, plentiful maneki neko cats behind the bar (maybe bring the bartenders some fresh batteries for these cats). Eclectic, simple, crowded. Hip?
A dance club to see and be seen in. They often have good DJs, and a sizeable queue outside on weekends.
NO JAZZ, lots of hard [often Polish] rock. VERY ENTHUSIASTIC student crowd. There's a bar area to escape the dancing. Find an engineering student with some tattoos and piercings to take home tonight.
Tiny place, soot-stained walls with enigmatic old portraits staring down at you. Good for an intimate talk over a cup of viscous hot chocolate.
Try the shot of the day–usually an interesting flavored vodka. A small laid-back place with clean white walls, cathedral ceilings, and good wooden nooks to hide in and look down on the bar from.
Beer, coffee, tea, sophisticated tasty snacks, day or night. Work there while young stylish architects plan public art projects at a nearby table. Opens on the Planty park, insulated in winter.
Japanese art center and museum. Cheap but good sushi. Changing exhibits. Good tea in square little iron pots. Good view of the river and the castle. Downstairs, a large concert venue.
A kind of center for nightlife in Podgórze (just across the footbridge). Frequent live music.
Coffee and tiny sandwiches during the day, loud music and dancing at night. The subterranean dancefloor, when it's open (Fridays and Saturdays?) is the city's most fun fire-hazard.
Tiny concert venue. Good place to catch a violent punk band from Finland, for example. Dark, small, and stinky, but in a GOOD way.
Play darts, watch Polish football, make new friends or lose old ones. A hangout of the damned. Dark and dirty but grimly cheerful. Quite possibly the CHEAPEST BEER ON THE MAIN SQUARE is found here.
A Polish student hideout. Occasional Polish Karaoke. The mildew problem comes and goes, but it's a reliable spot for enthusiastic dancing and cavorting.
People come here to look good. Examine their clothes! Appreciate their hair! Bask in the glow of the flashing cubes behind the bar. They often charge a cover and there is often door selection.
English bookstore. Plays old jazz and swing music. Coffee, wine, tea, CARROT CAKE and other baked treats. A nice ginger pumpkin soup. And a VERY GOOD SELECTION of relatively CHEAP books.
Traditional herring served, which likes to be eaten with vodka. Cheap shots, cheap beer, good mix of ages in this crowded place. Heavy bar snacks, but in the Polish tradition.
Very high-quality restaurant, mostly Italian in flavor. Delicious soups, salads, pasta and more. Try the salad with duck, or the gnocchi.
Keep an eye on the foot traffic passing by outside the Mariacki church. Menu changes every few days. Elegantly-conceived offerings. Fresh toasted baguette slices to snack on. Exceptional coffee.
An eccentric favorite gathering spot for evening semi-weirdos. Descendant of the beautiful dog. Downstairs for dancing. Casual.
Home base in Kraków, at least if you're staying here. Central location, good view of the Wawel castle, good access to the best of Kraków.
At least the THIRD incarnation of this great venue. The beautiful dog refuses to die! Now she re-appears in Kazimierz.
Nice cellar pub (with a courtyard open in warmer weather). Often plays host to bands from far, far away in their tiny performance chamber.
Another club with door selection. They usually play well-blended music, top 40 mostly of today and before today. For people well-prepared to have a good time.
One of the city's many Irish pubs. Pub quiz on Thursday nights at 20.00. If you want to watch the match, you should go here. Heavy Irish pub food expertly prepared.
A dazzling collection of fairly expensive multimedia equipment awaits you in this underground museum. See what's under the main square and how it got there.
Good pizza (they deliver, too) and pasta near the main square. There's one in Kazimierz, too.
2nd-most-popular tourist destination. Explore salty caves, lick the walls (they're salty!). Underground cathedral – get married underground, mail an underground postcard, or eat an underground meal.
Light, uplifting breakfasts and tasty entrees (good pasta for example) as the day continues. Big crumbling courtyard in the back when the weather improves.
Vegetarian / vegan meals, creative and well-seasoned. Renowned fair-trade coffee. Not a traditional menu, but offerings change daily. A small but popular place. Breakfast and lunch.
Main! Train! Station! Trains leaving for the airport every half hour or so most of the time.
Main bus station. Buses leave from downstairs for Polish destinations mostly, upstairs for Eurolines and other out-of-the-country journeys. Some astoundingly rude ticket salespeople.
if you don't want to try Krakow's famous local Obwarzanek sold on the street, get the american equivalent–a bagel–instead. High-quality mexican food offerings too. A Swedish favorite.
Not the closest place to our hostel, but well worth the walk. Well-brewed coffee and carefully-created dishes. Interior has a bright simple aesthetic. Highly recommended.
Friendly place for coffee or beer or something inbetween. Catch the Open Mike Nights some sundays, which are truly an event.
Hungarian place with a delicate, slightly faded elegance. Exquisite, gigantic placki z gulaszem (best potato pancakes with goulash) in town. Bring a big appetite.
Big juicy burgers in Kazimierz! Crispy slabs of fried potatoes and many choices to decorate your slab of delicious ground cow. Hip music and a clean "Warsaw-style" aesthetic. Veg., vegan choices too.
Delicious warm naleśniki (crêpes) served fat with your choice of savory or sweet fillings. A tiny place and very popular although somewhat hidden.
Small, steamy and crowded at lunch. Supernaturally delicious pierogi ruskie. People either love this place or fear it. A classic undiluted milk bar.
Elegant and well-equipped performance space, often host to festivals, concerts, films and other cultural events. Bar/reception area downstairs. One of Kraków's most attractive new buildings.
The most elegant restaurant in Nowa Huta, good food, enjoyable dance evenings, atmosphere goes back to 50s and 60s. Step into the time machine; there's delicious food and drinks in there.
Have a break from the parquet dancefloor with barszcz or herring or a bottle of vodka brought to your table by decorous waiters. House chanteuse sings Disco polo songs live. Serious fun for a group.
Discoballs, heavy beats without pause or mercy. Bouncers outside appraise your shoes from behind velvet ropes. Erasmus parties. Often not free to get in. But people seem to really love this place.
Small cinema on the main square with an eclectic program (new but also classics). And it's one place in Kraków that shows contemporary polish films with english subtitles from time to time.
amazing building, former Schindler's factory, refurbished by a great florentine architect, Claudio Nardi...can't miss it if you go to Krakow!
Drinks & burger bar in the old lobby of abandoned concrete hotel. Large, open, repurposed post-industrial decor. Sit outside in nice weather. Very different feel to most places in Krakow.
Another charmingly dark, dim and weirdly decorated place in Kazimierz. Good coffee, good music, good alcohol. Absolutely beautiful little courtyard garden open only in warm weather.
Escape to this place behind Bomba if Bomba is too crowded. Good space (you're luck if you can score a loft) and good selection of beer.
Hearty, high-quality, delicious (and inexpensive) home-style polish food in front of the Heroes Of The Ghetto square. Stop here for a hot meal on your way to MOCAK or the Schindler Factory museum.
National Art Museum, with good permanent exhibits and also visiting ones. Attached is a cafe.
Elegant Cuisine substantially less expensive than it might be. High quality dining experience on the Podgórze side of the footbridge over the Wisła river.
