Where to eat

Entering a Polish home, whether you are an old friend or a stranger, you will be greeted with warm hospitality and a sumptuous meal. "A Guest in the house, God in the house", as the old Polish proverb says. Just looking at the menu can make your mouth water.

For centuries Polish cuisine has been the arena of competing influences from France and Italy, along with what was extensively from more exotic tables: Jewish, Armenian, Lithuanian, Cossack, Hungarian and Tartar.

Traditional Polish cuisine combines the refined and elegant tastes introduced to Poland by the French court of Henri de Valois - the first elected Polish King, with the wild, mysterious flavours of the Lithuanian forests, the sweet aroma of the dishes served for the Jewish Sabbath supper, and the fierce, rare taste of steak Tartar - originally made by the horsemen in Genghis Kahn's army who used to place slices of raw beef under their saddles to tenderise the meat.
Locally made dishes specific to different parts of Poland will also spoil you for choice.

Fresh water fish is a favourite dish in the north of Poland where is an abundance of lakes. From the sandy plains of Mazovia in central Poland comes żurek - a sour rye soup and the Eastern belt is known for the world famous pierogi. Wielkopolska in Western Poland will treat you to aromatic duck dishes; Suwalszczyzna in the north-east corner of Poland offers the best potato dishes and Podhale at the foot of the Tatra Mountains is famous for kwaśnica - sauerkraut soup and oscypek - sheep's milk smoked cheese.

Wherever you go, you can enjoy delicacies that for centuries have been made from produce harvested in the fields, meadows, forests, lakes and rivers of Poland.

Any experienced Polish chef will tell you that real Polish cuisine is incomplete without cereals, fish, crayfish, venison and the fruits of the forest. To understand why Polish delicacies taste so good you have to know that they are made from organic products grown naturally and cooked in the traditional 'home-made' style without artificial additives. The best chefs and cooks pass down through the generations their recipes for pancakes made from turnip, cabbage, lobster butter, pickled wild hawthorn fruit for decorating venison and much, much more.

Traditional Polish cookery books are full of recipes using ingredients that foreigners might find rather exotic. Sour cabbage and cucumber, cereals, dried mushrooms, curdled milk and sour rye are a few of the unusual ingredients to be savoured. But most importantly, cooking the Polish way means putting your heart into it.

polish food