I find that surprising. If anything changed in E.Europe after 1989, it is the availability and quality of food - especially in big cities such as Warsaw, Cracow, Prague, or re-named Leningrad. Leningrad is an excellent case in point - you travel on a dilapidated subway train (once the pride of the Soviet system), but there is no shortage of first class dining, especially around Nevsky Prospect. Ditto for Prague and Cracow - especially the historical districts.
Your problem probably might have something to do with asking locals for a good restaurant. Locals in E.Europe seldom dine out; they eat at home. If they go out, they either tend to drink-out or use fast food joints whose quality vary. Most of them as not as flashy as McD, but food quality is usually better than the stuff you buy in fast food joints here.
Main reason is that dining out it is way too expensive given their disposable income. Average paycheck in Poland is about $400 a month, so spending $10 per person on a dinner in a good restaurant may sound dirt cheap here, but most locals cannot simply afford it. By comparison, food in supermarkets is very cheap comparing to what you pay in the US - $10 can get you a weekly supply of food for a family of three. As a result, restaurant are populated mainly by tourists and local mafia types. Butr if you ask an average Joe Schmoe where to eat, he will most likely direct you to a cheapo fast food joint.
As far as the "slaughtering a pig" story - it sounds like it was taken out of pages of _Painted Bird_ by Jerzy Kosinski - a fabrication for the consumption of gullible US-ers. Few people slaughter pigs in Poland today - they buy food imported from France or the Netherlands because it is cheaper.
That reminds me of an experience I had some 10 years ago at Rutgers. We had an anti-war demo organized by CISPES - and after the demo participants were invited to a party in the house of one of the organizers, a white liberal boy. Learning about my E.European origin, the host told me that he just visited Russia, and immediately start telling me the American Foreign Travel Experience Stories, starting from #2 (abrasive toilet paper) and proceeding to #3 (disgusting vending machine). Before progressing to lard and pig feet (#4 in my catalogue), I asked him how long he stayed there. He answered two weeks. I then asked if that was all he could observe in that big and diverse country during his two week trip. He got pissed and stopped talking to me. I could not understand why. I would not say anyhting to a redneck, but one would expect at least some cultural sensitivity from a liberal CISPES activist, no?
Wojtek