Cheap Eats
Busia’s Kitchen
Polish style grandmother feast on wheels
Elizabeth Laseter
Published: February 20, 2013
Busia’s Kitchen
busiaskitchen.com, @busiaskitchen
From a distance, Busia’s Kitchen looks more like an ice cream truck than a food truck, but don’t let the pastel blue-green-and-pink, old school RV camper fool you, because this busia—an Americanized Polish term of endearment for grandmother—knows how to cook. Mother-and-daughter owners Pat Dembeck and Jennifer Cullen bring Cullen’s own busia’s traditional Polish cooking to life from inside their mobile kitchen. We nabbed the Polish platter ($8), which changes through the week, but on our visit featured a potato-and-cheddar pierogi, or Polish dumpling; golabki, stuffed cabbage; and sauteed onions, cabbage, and mushrooms, most of which was smothered by an unnecessarily large dollop of sour cream. The golabki, stuffed with ground beef and rice and braised in a light, flavorful tomato sauce, was thankfully saved by a partition in the Styrofoam box. The Polish platter is the most expensive offering, but it’s more than enough for two. For $4 you can get a quarter-pound Nathan’s jumbo hot dog, wrapped in German bologna and topped with sauteed onions, with a bag of Utz chips. We also tried the spicy, cream-based Tuscan potato-and-sausage soup ($5). Tender kale and perfectly cooked skin-on potatoes gave this soup a rustic, made-with-care feel. A piece of sweet cornbread helped to tone down the soup’s heat. We finished our Polish feast with a piece of Aunt Kim’s Jewish apple cake ($3). A perfect balance of apples and cinnamon, the cake was moist and not at all too sweet. This busia doesn’t want you to leave hungry, and believe us, you won’t.
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