01 December 2025
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We catch up before a Tuesday dinner service, when Wójcikowska has a moment for a chat. Her new project, Vamos!, opened two years ago near the vibrant, restaurant-filled Rynek Podgórski market square. The unpretentious, lively spot instantly won the hearts of locals, and in 2025 it joined the official Polish selection of The MICHELIN Guide. The restaurant’s simple yet stylish dining room — described as “not too fancy” in its Instagram bio — is adorned with paintings and a school of shiny fish, plus a glass case filled with pintxos and tapas, and an ever-changing menu with dishes loosely inspired by the cuisines of Mediterranean countries. “Don’t be deceived by the Spanish name,” Wójcikowska says with a smile. “Though that might have been the initial plan, we are not a Spanish restaurant. We just really liked the sound of the word.”
On the menu you’ll find grilled padrón peppers served on a bed of fluffy, truffled ricotta cheese with tandoori dressing and nigella seeds; lamb meatballs with roasted grapes and tzatziki; and tuna ceviche with mango, sesame oil and fried corn. Her dishes are always full of colors, textures and aromas from different parts of the world — often places Wójcikowska, a passionate traveler, has visited.
Her career started rather unexpectedly with a summer job in a seaside restaurant. “I was studying landscape architecture, but the subject wasn’t resonating with me at all. I took the job just to have some summer pocket money. It was nothing special, not a lavish restaurant, and I had absolutely no experience in gastronomy. But somehow,” Wójcikowska explains, “against all odds, I absolutely fell in love with it — with how the work in the kitchen looks, how it feels. That you can learn discipline and organization. And frankly, I was good at it. I realized that’s where I want to be, what I want to do.”
And so after finishing her studies, she decided to move to Krakow, where she took a job in a small bistro in the touristy Kazimierz neighborhood. After two years, she scored a position in the fine-dining restaurant of a luxury hotel, and she spent seven years there working under three different head chefs. The last of these was Grzegorz Bucki, a chef Wójcikowska considers her major mentor. “He was the one who always pushed me further, who encouraged me to do more.”
He was also the one who prepared Wójcikowska for her first culinary competition. “It was a competition dedicated to Greek cuisine, and at that time I was traveling to Greece quite often. I loved the food, the produce; each trip brought me a lot of inspiration. So I decided to try my hand at cooking it and letting professionals judge my ideas and skills — especially as I am a self-taught cook with no formal gastronomic education. I took second place, which for me was — and still is — a great success.” Wójcikowska notes that participating in professional culinary competitions differs greatly from working in a restaurant — even a fine-dining one. “It’s a different tempo, a different kind of stress. But it also teaches you a lot: how to create dishes in your imagination, how to think about flavor combinations before you’re able to try them.”
Her love of Mediterranean cuisine has stayed with her ever since and naturally informed the next step in her career. “My fondness for Mediterranean, and specifically Greek, cuisine was well known, so when a new Greek restaurant was opening, I was approached to take the post of head chef,” Wójcikowska explains. “First came Olif — a takeaway concept fit for the lockdown times — which later evolved into Filo, a full-fledged modern bistro inspired by Greek flavors, and then its sibling restaurant, Mazi, where the menu drew inspiration from different Mediterranean kitchens. Though my dishes were rooted in simple Mediterranean ingredients and classics, I elevated them slightly with the techniques and aesthetics I knew from fine dining, making them a bit lighter and more contemporary, but still informal.”
Finally, after years of working as a head chef, there came a moment when she felt ready to take the next step. “While being head chef at Filo and Mazi I once again learned a lot. I was lucky to work quite independently, but there were aspects where I wasn’t the decision-maker, or where we simply had different ideas and plans for the future. I guess it was just the time. We parted with the owners of my previous restaurants in a natural, amicable way. And I will always keep these two places in my heart, as I created their kitchens from scratch.”
It was time to open the next chapter: transitioning from being simply a chef to becoming a co-owner. “A fun fact is that my current business partner was the very first guest who ever came to our Greek bistro. To this day he jokes that if it had been up to the fasolada I was serving back then, we would have never opened a restaurant together. All things happened when they were meant to happen.”
She admits that every step of her career prepared her for this new role. “I am also lucky when it comes to the people I work with. I have a good hand for recruitment, and a restaurant is always a team effort. If you have a good team around you, you can move mountains. But of course, a restaurant is a restaurant, and no matter how well you plan, you can’t be ready for everything,” Wójcikowska admits. “Yet if I had to sum up my work philosophy, it’s this: Be afraid and do. Always be cautious, think about possible outcomes, but… take the jump. This is what brought me here.”
For her persistence in building her career, Wójcikowska has been recognized with the inaugural MICHELIN Young Talent Award in The MICHELIN Guide Poland selection. “On the day of the announcement, I was actually on holiday in Croatia with my friend. We knew the new selection would be revealed at some point during the day, so we sat with some wine, phone in hand, and I was frantically refreshing the app. At one point, the results changed and I saw Vamos! among the recommended restaurants! It was so emotional. I won’t hide it — that was my goal, my big dream when we were opening Vamos! — to be noticed by The MICHELIN Guide.”
Wójcikowska recalls, “Just a few minutes later, my phone started to go crazy — people were sending congratulations and screenshots from press releases. At first I didn’t understand what it was all about until I realized that I had also received a special award. And at that moment, I simply burst into tears of happiness.”
What’s the best part of having her own restaurant? “Freedom. This is the most important thing for me. I value freedom immensely — in cooking, in managing the kitchen — and I don’t particularly like it when someone tries to put me into a box or fixed frames. Here I have space to develop and evolve in my own direction, to validate ideas, see what works and what doesn’t,” she explains.
As for what advice she would give to young chefs at the beginning of their careers, Wójcikowska says, “Running a restaurant is an art of compromise — an art of finding space for your own plans while still remembering about others.”
Hero Image: Wójcikowska, recognized with the inaugural MICHELIN Young Talent Award in The MICHELIN Guide Poland selection © Vamos!
