I’m so intimidated by the 60 menu items at Bar Mleczny Żak in Krakow that I order the milk bar’s pensioners’ special. This daily two-course meal costs zł9.95 (£1.90), and today it’s zupa szpinaku (spinach soup) followed by pierogi ruskie (potato-cheese dumplings). By God it’s good. The spinach soup I carry to my Formica table is laced with teardrops of sour cream. The Russian-style pierogi are soft pillows stuffed with floury potato, and they slip down a treat.

Using Google Translate, I work my way though the entire menu over the course of a week. Placki ziemniaczane (potato pancakes with mushrooms, £1.10). Gołąbki (cabbage rolls filled with barley, onions and pork, £1.55). There are four types of borscht soup (from 65p). I see the same faces in the milk bar all the time – sleepy students and pensioners. We can all afford to eat here every day.

And that’s the whole point. Bar mleczny (milk bars) started life in 1896 in Warsaw and became very popular in the depression era. But they really took off across socialist postwar Poland in the guise of workers’ canteens – government-subsidised cafes where workers could get a good, nutritious and affordable meal. They sold traditional Polish staples, and snacks such as cheese cutlets – good meat was hard to come by in the 1950s – along with other dairy products, hence the moniker.

Poland’s milk bars predate the fad for locally sourced cuisine by serving whatever is cheap and seasonal. Everything on the menu at Bar Mleczny Żak, down to my plastic beaker of crushed raspberry juice, hails from Krakow’s hinterland.

While still popular among some groups of Poles – the aforesaid students and pensioners – the nation’s milk bars are facing a make-or-break moment. Today, fewer than 150 milk bars exist across Poland, down from 40,000 in their heyday. Many closed after the collapse of communism when the newly affluent started clamouring for finer dining or western fast-food chains.

The government is also reducing its subsidy and many bar mleczny can’t compete with the accoutrements demanded by today’s diners – table service and a beer would be nice, but these “bars” are self-service and booze-free.

However, recent years have seen a mini-revival driven by several influences: the novelty factor for those too young to know about communism’s deprivations; the nostalgia of the older generation; and a revamping of old milk bars such as Milkbar Tomasza and Bar Gornik in Krakow.

Tomasza was bought as a rundown milk bar in 2011 at public auction. “There was only one other bidder,” says its Irish co-owner, Tom Naughton. His friends thought he was crazy to want to reinvent a restaurant scene scorned by most modern Poles. “But by sourcing ingredients daily from Stary Kleparz market, and by cooking classic dishes to order, we are still welcoming older diners.”

And this time they’re bringing their grandkids for platters of pierogi, too.