Dreams of hot dogs in Scots-based Polish pub

EDINBURGH (Reuters) - Under new management, the pub now called "The Village Head" sells beer on tap, is attracting a keen soccer crowd and its landlady is thinking about adding food.

"It would be hot dogs," said Joanna Majkrzak, the 27 year-old manager of the "U Soltysa" pub in Edinburgh. "But Polish hot dogs, not those things they've got here. Proper hot-dogs with loads of salad, ketchup and mustard."

One of many small businesses to have cropped up in Britain to cater for the east Europeans migrating to work after their countries joined the European Union, in the daytime U Soltysa serves mostly Scots, she said: "Poles are working then."

Majkrzak, who is Polish, and her Irish partner Dillon Doyle took on the pub with its Scottish clients in June 2007, and are committed to a five-year lease: "If everything goes well we'll open another pub."

A red and white Polish soccer scarf hangs up on a wall alongside the more familiar navy blue and white of Scotland. Majkrzak has to raise her voice to be heard over the din of Polish and English chatter and loud Polish pop music.

"This pub was sinking when we got here," she said. "We re-opened it within a week after dealing with all the paperwork. We just painted the place light green, cleaned up and changed some of the carpets.

"I'm still putting more into the business than it brings in but we have enough money to get by. Everything we earn we invest in the pub. We have a growing number of new clients."

Customer Robert Noon, a retired soldier in his 50s, is happy with the new place: "The staff are more friendly," he said. "I talk to Polish people here -- a lot of them don't speak good English."

Martial Lee, 29, another former soldier, is enthusiastic: "You can get beer here on tap now, it's much better," he said, drinking a Polish Tyskie. "I like the flavor. Like Belgian beers it has at least some flavor."

But Majkrzak has not ruled out eventually going back home.

"In the future when I become an old grandma, I'd like to have a small house in the mountains. In Poland, obviously."