A year ago, on the last sun­ny day of Sep­tem­ber, I caught the morn­ing train from War­saw to Bia­lystok. I had lunch plans with my friend Mag­da, but that was pre­tense. I was writ­ing a book about Pol­ish bak­ing and need­ed to con­firm what I already knew: that there are no bialys in Bia­lystok. We all know why. One final check before I hand­ed in the manuscript.

Either the train got in ear­ly that day or Mag­da showed up late so I sat on a bench and watched peo­ple hur­ry in and out of the clas­si­cal-style train sta­tion. Long before Bia­lystok became the edge of a cer­tain kind of Europe, after which Lukashenko’s Belarus and then Putin’s Rus­sia begin, the sta­tion was once an impor­tant stop on the Russ­ian Empire’s War­saw – St. Peters­burg line. Burned down in the First World War and bombed in the Sec­ond, the city kept rebuild­ing the train sta­tion to look just as it had before. This means you can get a pret­ty good idea of how grand things were back in the day, so long as your imag­i­na­tion allows for kebab shops and Zab­ka con­ve­nience stores. I’d been out in War­saw all night and my aching head allowed for no such anachronisms.

I’d been doing this sort of food research trip all year but aside from writ­ing about it, it was no dif­fer­ent than what I’d been doing for a decade and a half. I live in Berlin but don’t like it very much. With the excep­tion of its par­ties, Berlin isn’t a place to feel warmth and wel­come as a stranger. But Poland is right over the bor­der offer­ing relief. In Poland, I’ve always been able to find a cheese blintz at a road­side stand or a loaf of chal­lah at a bak­ery or a plate of kasha at a milk bar. Restau­rants smell like home did on days when we made chick­en soup. Is every­one just friend­lier? Pro­jec­tion is a tremen­dous thing.

When a smil­ing Mag­da res­cued me from my bench, the reper­cus­sions of the pre­vi­ous night had spread to my stom­ach. I need­ed to eat. She took me by the elbow. I was with the right per­son; Mag­da works for Warsaw’s Polin Muse­um and is an expert on Jew­ish food in Poland. We’d first stop at a bak­ery – it was plum and streusel bun sea­son – and then she’d take me for lunch. 

Mag­da walked me past restau­rants adver­tis­ing kishke and pota­to kugel – region­al spe­cial­ties to this day – and popped into a gro­cery store sell­ing her­ring ​“Jew­ish style.” We passed an aban­doned Jew­ish girls school and strolled by ice cream carts in the Park Pala­cowy Branickich. 

Just across from the palace park is the Paw­ilon Towarzys­ki. It’s a mid­cen­tu­ry semi-cir­cu­lar build­ing that’s been there since 1973. The unusu­al shape and copi­ous glass means the sun­light comes in at every hour of the day, even in the win­ter despite the Mid­dle Euro­pean haze. The restau­rant changed own­ers and mod­ern­ized a few years ago so the flat­ware is con­tem­po­rary and there are on-trend light fixtures.

Mag­da and I ordered barszcz and chopped her­ring on toast points and then she got a call from work. She excused her­self to take it. No longer fac­ing her, I had a clear view to the end of the restaurant. 

Against the oppo­site wall sat a per­fect­ly bald elder­ly man with a face like a par­rot. He wore a fine navy suit and a pressed white shirt acces­sorized with tie, gold clip, pock­et square, and cuf­flinks. A wait­er came and laid the man’s table with pressed white linen and a heavy cloth nap­kin and sil­ver­ware in the old style. I looked around at the rest of us chumps being served straight onto lam­i­nate. What the hell was going on? The wait­er then set down a plate of soup on the old man’s table­cloth. I stared while he slurped. The longer I watched, the more uncan­ny it became. My head throbbed. Where was my barszcz? This man was a dead ringer for the Singer brothers.

The thing is, all those years I’d been dig­ging through Poland for famil­iar foods, I’d also been direct­ing my trav­els through the writ­ing of I.J. and I.B. Singer. There are hard­ly bet­ter guides if you want to look for some­thing you’re miss­ing in worlds that no longer exist. The Magi­cian of Lublin saw me cov­ered in ticks in a pine for­est some­where in the far East of Poland. Shosha got me chased out of a court­yard in the Pra­ga dis­trict of War­saw by an unleashed dog. The Broth­ers Ashke­nazi had me shuf­fling through a Feb­ru­ary snow storm in Lodz.

Late­ly, deep research into Pol­ish and Pol­ish Jew­ish bak­ing both in-situ and dias­po­ra – cue Ene­mies, a Love Sto­ry and Shad­ows on the Hud­son–had made the Singer broth­ers’ work all the more rel­e­vant for me. I write in my upcom­ing cook­book Dobre Dobre, that I. B. Singer ​“had a par­tic­u­lar knack for describ­ing and memo­ri­al­iz­ing pre-war Poland— from bak­ers’ daugh­ters flirt­ing over yeasty bas­kets of rolls, to the smells and sounds, both foul and sen­su­al, of Krochmal­na Street, the chaot­ic heart of the Jew­ish ghet­to, to the smoke-and schmalz-filled salons where artists and bundists met to argue over their vibrant, dif­fi­cult world.” 

I caught a wait­er as she passed and asked what was going on. Why did that man have a full fine-din­ing set­up? Who was he?

“He brings it from home,” she said, non­cha­lant. ​“It’s how we used to serve peo­ple. He insists on it. He’s been com­ing here since Paw­ilon opened.”

Mag­da returned from her call. I didn’t trust what I was seeing.

“Do you see this guy? Does he look like one of the Singer broth­ers to you?”

Mag­da agreed. Then her phone rang again.

I kept staring. 

A jour­nal­ist friend once told me a sto­ry from the 1980s. He was a col­lege stu­dent when he saw Isaac Bashe­vis Singer on the street in New York. So he chased I.B. down the street to intro­duce him­self. Mr. Singer, he told him, I’m a big fan of your work. Mr. Singer asked him his name, so he told him. Then Mr. Singer asked him what he did, and my friend told him he was a writer. At this point in the sto­ry I held my breath, hor­ri­fied. The chutz­pah. But Mr. Singer just called over his wife and intro­duced him. ​“He’s a read­er and a writer,” Mr. Singer said. Imag­ine that. Isaac Bashe­vis Singer call­ing you a read­er and a writer. I asked my friend how he could have dared. He’s one of us, he told me. Why not?

When the old man fin­ished his lunch, a nurse who’d been hid­ing her­self came out of nowhere to help him get to his feet. Now I saw he had alli­ga­tor shoes and a pol­ished wood cane. As he and the nurse passed, he stopped and smiled at me. Up close I could see the liv­er spots on his head. Up close he looked even more like a Singer.

“We know each oth­er,” he said.

“I don’t under­stand Pol­ish well, can you speak slow­er?” I said, my knowl­edge of anoth­er Slav­ic lan­guage helped me bum­ble through the phrase.

“We know each oth­er,” he said, in Eng­lish this time.

“Do we?” 

“Where are you from?”

“I’m from America.”

“What do you do?”

I hes­i­tat­ed. ​“I’m a baker.”

“We know each oth­er,” he repeat­ed, still smiling. 

“Of course we do,” I said. Why not? 

Then his nurse took his arm and walked him away. Magda’s call was over. She laughed from across the table. We had to get going too. 

There were no bialys in Bia­lystok that day and Mag­da hasn’t seen the old man at Paw­ilon since. No one in the city seems to know who he is. I’ve made inquiries. A lot of things go miss­ing in that town; some things can be rebuilt to imi­tate what once was. Oth­er things can’t. My book comes out in Octo­ber. I’m glad I didn’t tell him I’m a writer.