Polish chefs are going back to their culinary roots

by Anna J. Kutor

Poland’s gastronomic reputation has traditionally rested on heavy home-spun meals made with meat, cabbage and potato. In other words, good old-fashioned comfort food, such as pierogi (dumplings),
bigos (cabbage and meat stew) and golonka (pork knuckle). But recently, a new
generation of chefs have takend the first steps to rid the country of its
stodgy food reputation, reinterpreting the country’s classic recipes to create
lighter, healthier dishes. And what do you call Polish cooking with
21st-century mojo? MoPo, Modern Polish cuisine.

The MoPo chefs are now using regional, organic produce, such as river
and Baltic fish, mushrooms, forest fruits, sunflower and pumpkin oils and herbs
like bison grass, celery and parsley in healthier ways. Rather than using high
heat, they’re cooking them more slowly in lower temperatures to retain the
flavor and nutrients. They’re serving lighter sauces and meals made with
minimal oils, in smaller portions.

“Poland
now has accessible good-quality local products and a growing number of
open-minded chefs,” says Kurt Sheller, one of the MoPo movement’s gurus. Known
for his wild walrus moustache and short-tempered perfectionism, since 1993
Swiss-born Sheller honed his maverick cooking skills at Warsaw’s
top restaurants, such as those at the Bristol,
Sheraton and Rialto Hotels. He launched Poland’s first cooking academy in
2002, helped raised the status of cooking and collaborated and taught many of
his current MoPo colleagues. “After a long fascination with foreign foods, the
climate is right for a bold new style of local cooking that celebrates the
individuality of Polish food,” he says.

The MoPo food-fad is now spreading across Poland. Exponents include
celebrity restaurateur Magda Gessler, Paweł
Oszczyk of Le Regina, Karol Okraza of Malinowa Restaurant at the Bristol
Hotel, Wojciech Modest Amaro of The
Polish Business Roundtable Club all stationed in Warsaw
and Adam Chrząstowski of Ancora in Krakow.
Regional cooking competitions also feature lots of under-the-radar talent,
where chefs design contemporary MoPo concoctions that promptly disappear fade or
are only found in roadside restaurants, like Karczma Jana in Olsztyn and The Palace Restaurant in Stare
Jabłonki both in the northern Mazury Lake District.

Going back to our roots

Poland’s native culinary heritage was ground down during the 20th century. First the
country’s historic fusion kitchen – influenced by culinary traditions of
occupying nations such as France, Italy, Germany and Russia – was repressed by Communist-era
scarcity of ingredients that inspired only humdrum cooking. Then, after the
fall of Communism, the country’s diners and chefs were eager to embrace Western
fast-food and exotic Japanese and Chinese cuisines. It’s with a new wave of
patriotic pride, then, that MoPo chefs are going back to Poland’s
gastronomic roots for inspiration in creating Polish haute cuisine.  

Chef Adam Chrząstowski opened Krakow’s first MoPo-focused venue, Ancora Restaurant, in 2008. “The spirit of going back to our roots, to re-discover a real Polish sense of cooking and taste, is now
very popular,” says Chrząstowski. “But it’s going to take some time until old
eating habits die out, and people really start to appreciate chefs as more than
just cooks.”

Chrząstowski takes standard Polish food staples and blends them with
new-age flourishes. His restaurant serves venison tenderloin with grape-and-onion
marmalade, duck breast with ginger and blackcurrant sauce. Catfish filet is
baked with boletus crust, salmon trout is slowly stewed at a low temperature of
below 130 °C and served with tomato-garlic confiture and potato
soufflé. For presentation, Chrząstowski makes towers on the plate out of layers
of food and paints this with light sauces: game meats come with blueberry
sauce, fish dishes with sauce based on bison grass.

Ahead of the Bunch

Karol Okrasa dishes up some of Warsaw’s
most innovative dishes at Malinowa Restaurant in the Bristol Hotel. The
31-year-old gastro-entrepreneur cross-pollinated long overlooked local
ingredients with new cooking techniques and a hint of Mediterranean
influence.

“Every meal on our menu is crafted in a completely different way, either by special seasoning or by using
previously unexploited grouping of ingredients, so that it doesn’t look or
smell traditional at all,” he says sitting in the well-appointed lounging area
of the Bristol Hotel, in a break from preparing a feast for a closed evening
event. The restaurant next door, decked in burgundy-white color combinations
in the antique furniture and tapestry, buzzes with lunching businessmen. “But
from the very first bite you can tell that it’s characteristically Polish.”

On this winter’s menu is a soup made from chanterelle mushroom concentrate and truffle oil, served with
small cabbage leaves stuffed with veil and chestnut pulp flavored by aromatic
bison-grass. Other seasonal specials include creamy pumpkin soup with baked
cheese dumplings; freshly smoked pigeon breast with zucchini pancake and a
juniper berry sauce; and seared sturgeon filet gratinated with Zubrowka grass
sabayon, served with potato dumplings colored green from parsley, and a
sweet-and-sour blue cheese and roasted apple sauce.

Another aficionado of traditional-modern is Wojciech Modest Amaro, of
the members-only Polish Business Roundtable Club, housed in the swanky Sobański Palace.
Returning to Poland in 2002 after a nine year gastronomic journey through England,
Germany and the USA, Amaro brings a multicultural angle to routine recipes.  

“It’s about being open to inventive techniques without forgetting the
classics,” Amaro says, talking about his signature style of cooking – dubbed
Modest Cuisine, after his middle name and his direct gimmick-free method of
cooking. He deconstructs old recipes and re-assembles them using ideas taken
from fashionable food trends such as molecular gastronomy and Modern Spanish
cuisine.

In his newest dish, a reinvention of Polish chowder, Amaro adds caviar into the bread
ferment, creates a clear consommé using five types of meat bones, and substitutes
white sausage with confit of duck and boletus with black trumpet mushrooms and
adds small ravioli-like pockets stuffed with roasted garlic purée.

Epicurean Empire

Perhaps more influential than anyone else in creating MoPo is Magda
Gessler. Defined by curly blonde hair and culinary vision, Poland’s preeminent restaurateur has designed the interiors and menus of 22 top-class dining establishments in the last two decades. Her latest
ambitious undertaking, Gar, meaning “pot” and referring to the dish that all
meals are served in, opened in 2008 on the corner of ulica Sienkiewicza and
ulica Jasna in downtown Warsaw and features French-Polish fusion menu that
highlights the origins of each ingredients. You have like smoked oscypek (smoked
highlander cheese) from the southern Tatra mountains, carp and organic
vegetables from southeastern region near Lublin, and fruit honey from the Kurpie
region in north-east Poland.

Ale Gloria, tucked underneath a grandiose art-deco building in downtown Warsaw, is a prominent
part of Gessler’s kitchen-kingdom. The grandiose rooms are decked with
strawberries and white feathers, which provide an ideal backdrop for the
seasonally driven MoPo menu. Showcase dishes – compiled by Gessler and
executive chef Marcin Chojecki – exhibit big contrasts in flavors: red borscht
soup comes with raspberry vinegar and blackcurrant syrup; dumplings made of celery
root are filled with boletus mushroom in a veal broth; and duck breasts are
served in a rose sauce and with a spicy strawberry salad.

“The refined palate of Poles is driving the demand for experimental yet
familiar flavors that soar with artistic touches,” says Gessler. “MoPo’s
moment in the culinary limelight has arrived.”