On Grand Canal Street, a new food truck offers Polish street-food classics

The last couple of days have been pretty busy, said Arnold Prządka on Friday afternoon.

He sat down at a blue picnic table inside The Place Food Market, a former car park on Grand Canal Street.

Behind him, his partner Adrian Kasprzak was inside their new food truck GooLoong, sizzling potato pancakes.

Their second day on the job was kind of like a tailgate party. It coincided with the American football game in the Aviva Stadium, between Georgia Tech and Florida State on Saturday 24 August, says Prządka.

“They all came here. It was a mess. But everyone had a great time,” he said.

GooLoong serves good outdoor food. The menu includes an open baguette covered in sauteed mushrooms and cheese, dumplings, and varieties of hot dogs.

It’s winter-friendly and filling, says Prządka. Take this kind of pizza. “We couldn’t do a thin base. The dough needs to be thicker. It keeps you going in the cold months.”

The Queen of Polish Street Food

Prządka and Kasprzak met at high school in Poznań, a city in western Poland, around 16 years ago, Prządka says.

Prządka moved to Dublin six years ago, he says.

He worked at Lucky Tortoise in the Temple Bar, the dim sum restaurant, before moving over to its sister business Okky, a Japanese street food spot on Aungier Street, he says.

Kasprzak joined him in Dublin in 2021, he says. “I worked with Adrian there as well.”

For about two years, they talked about doing something like GooLoong, he says. “We were always saying one day we’d do something, one day.”

When Okky closed at the start of the summer, they just decided to go for it, he says.

It was a simple idea, driven like many by a hankering for food they had left behind. In this case, they missed Polish street food, and couldn’t find it easily in Dublin which was surprising, he says. “There’s so many Polish people here. There’s a second generation now.”

Back in Poland, one go-to snack after a night out from vans like his was always the zapiekanka, an open toasted baguette, topped with sauteed mushrooms, fried onions and melted cheese.

More onions, brown and crispy are sprinkled over zig-zagging lines of ketchup.

It’s the Queen of Polish Street Food, says Kasprzak. “It’s the thing everyone knows. Something you get on your way over to or back from the club, something filling, something tasty and warm, because it’s fairly cold in the winters.”

Blending styles

Kasprzak brings down to the picnic bench a white box with two potato pancakes, covered in a goulash made with sweet pepper, onion, sour cream and slices of sausage.

The goulash is done in a Hungarian style, he says. “But the way we do the pancakes isn’t so common in Hungary.”

They grate raw potatoes, Prządka says. “You need to squeeze the water out, and leave a little bit of starch, add regular flour, pepper and grated onion as well.”

It’s pan-fried, before the goulash is slathered on top.

Families make it differently, he says. “My granny did the potatoes almost like a cream, a paste, and in Adrian’s house the pieces were bigger, so it had the same structure and feel of a hash brown.”

Polish cooking has many influences, he says. “We had the Jewish people who left their heritage in the food. The dumplings are pretty common in Ukraine and Slovakia, it’s food from across these parts.”

With the pancakes, he says, he wants to capture the flavour of Wielkopolska, a historic province in the centre of the country. “We want that to be ‘our thing’.”

Growing menu

On Tuesday evening, a pair of new signs sat on the countertop.

Customers could now get a sticky pastry known as a drożdżówka, served with two fillings –  apple and budyń, a vanilla custard.

Sized like a danish, and as chewy as a doughnut, the drożdżówka is topped with a light crumble.

They were made by Healthy Bread by Lukas, a Polish bakery based in Dublin, says Kasprzak.

A second “food alert” says there is now a Polish hot dog on the menu.

Kasprzak ladles ketchup, mustard and chopped spring onions over the hot dog. The sausage is cradled within a sesame bun, and covered in a blanket of vegetables and condiments.

There are pickled cucumbers, and surówka, a type of coleslaw with cabbage, carrot and apple, he says. “And there are some fried onions in there.”

It is substantial. They haven’t yet got a take-away box that fits it, he says, handing the bulging cardboard container across the counter.