Athletes fuel themselves in many ways: Tom Brady has his TB12 method. Michael Phelps consumed about 10,000 calories daily while training. The WNBA star Caitlin Clark dreams of chicken Parmesan, pasta and chocolate milk after a game. But for one of tennis’s top-ranked athletes, her go-to is simple: strawberries and cream.
No, not the strawberries and cream long associated with Wimbledon, but strawberries and cream over — wait for it — pasta. According to the tennis star Iga Świątek, currently ranked No. 4 in the world in tennis and competing today in the Wimbledon semifinals, makaron z truskawkami, as the dish is called in her home country of Poland, is her go-to.
“I ate it as a kid,” she said in a post-match interview this week. “It’s pasta with strawberries — pasta, strawberries, a little bit of yogurt — it’s just great.” Her response was met with audible gasps and murmurs from the Wimbledon crowd. “How strange,” the interviewer mused.
A video clip of the interview, posted to the official Wimbledon TikTok account, has been viewed two million times and garnered hundreds of comments. Some were skeptical: “What on Earth are people eating,” read one. Most commenters, however, were thrilled to see a nostalgic Polish dish publicized and praised on a global stage.
“Best Polish summer food ever made,” read one comment on Wimbledon’s TikTok. “Brings back childhood memories,” read another. Many reminisced about eating the dish at their grandmother’s house or for a primary school lunch. At the famous Bar Prasowy in Warsaw, a plate of strawberry pasta goes for 9 złoty, about $2.50.
“It’s one of those dishes every Polish kid remembers,” said Adriana Marczewska, a Polish cookbook author and television presenter, in an email. “For me, as a chef and culinary journalist, it’s both deeply sentimental and unexpectedly complete. It has all the elements of a perfect dish: carbs, fruit, dairy, sugar and a generous serving of nostalgia.”
“It’s the taste of summer in Poland,” she added.
Strawberries are plentiful in Poland: The country is the second-largest producer of the fruit in the European Union, a fact that may give some insight as to their unexpected use. But Poles are no strangers to the marriage of sweet fruit and starch.
“Conceptually, it is not far from pierogi filled with blueberries,” said Fabio Parasecoli, a professor of food studies at New York University and research fellow at the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Science.
In addition to sweet-leaning pierogi filled with fruit, there is fruit soup, or zupa owocowa, where fruits like strawberries are often simmered with potato starch for thickness.
The 24-year-old Ms. Świątek is probably far more focused on her match against the Swiss tennis player Belinda Bencic than the public reaction to her favorite food. But she might consider skipping next year’s Italian Open.
“I wish good luck for her when she come back in Italy,” the Italian tennis player Flavio Cobolli playfully warned after learning of her pasta preference.
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