A culinary revival is going down in northern Poland—here is why

In the far north, within the seashore city of Jastarnia, Anna and Piotr drive me down a bucolic rural highway they’ve jokingly named ‘Highway to Hel’, resulting in their one-table restaurant, Gryfon. I’m right here for brunch but additionally, it turns into clear, for a historical past lesson, as all the pieces chef Piotr prepares has a backstory rooted in outdated Polish or Kashubian tradition, or fishermen folklore. First up is cod liver, which Piotr calls “local foie gras” ­— a nod to Nineteen Twenties Polish delicacies. He serves it with a candy rosehip wine. The delicate chew evaporates in my mouth. “Sweet and salty is the local palate,” says Piotr. Next up, a whipped butter that’s been combined with do-it-yourself garum, a fish sauce comprised of the two-year-fermented anchovies. This is to be eaten with salmon and eel that Piotr has smoked over plum wooden, a convention right here stretching again over 6,000 years.

I tuck in and am so overtaken by the unctuous fattiness of the eel that I sit again in my chair. We end up with freshly baked challah and his well-known anchovies, which he sells in jars on the restaurant and markets all through the Tricity. “Are you feeling courageous?” Piotr asks, and out comes the booze — rosé, beer, vodka. He scoops out three handmade ice cream flavours: wild rose, pinewood (served with dried pine needles and pinecones) and herring, all to be washed down with herring vodka. “This is the taste of the air here,” says Piotr. “Wildflowers, trees and the sea. Sweet and salty.” It’s a memorable begin to my journey, despite the fact that the herring ice cream lingers on my tongue longer than I’d like.

Farming, fishing & fermenting

From Hel, I head south, driving by way of the marshy fishing villages of Swarzewo, Rewa and Mechelinki, the place pastel boats embellish steely Baltic shores. My subsequent cease is within the elegant spa city of Sopot, identified for its grand artwork nouveau mansions and for having the longest wood pier in Europe. Here, culinary wunderkind Rafał Koziorzemski helms the kitchen at Fisherman, the place the menu relies on culinary instinct. “Sometimes I wake up with an idea for a dish. Other times, I’ll have flashbacks from my grandmother’s cooking and remember something she taught me,” says Rafał, as he greets me at his cosy, candlelit restaurant. “I’ll write it down and try to recreate it the next day.” There’s all the pieces from Polish-style sashimi to Asian-influenced fish desserts, however his signature creation is paprikash. “This is from the communist days,” he says. “It was a cheap, filling dish for fishermen. They used vegetables and leftover fish scraps.” Rafał’s iteration is a reclamation of the standard stew. “I wanted to elevate it in quality and give it honour.” Scallops and liver pâté change scraps and every chew is buttery, lower by way of with the spicy paprika. I devour the plate in 5 bites.

While seafood is a mainstay alongside the coast, inland there’s earthy bounty. I head to Sopot’s neighbour, Gdynia, to walk across the Hala Targowa farmers’ market, set in an unlimited concrete corridor. Under domed glass ceilings, I scope out jars of do-it-yourself jams and preserves, pattern pickles, gawk on the basketball-sized heads of cabbage and take a look at naming all 12 mushroom varieties that one vendor has foraged within the close by Kashubian Lake District. Close to the market, in a bakery window, I spot a pączki (a freshly fried doughnut full of rose petal jam) and pop in for one — properly, two.

A brief jaunt from the city centre is my subsequent cease, Biały Królik (White Rabbit), the place chef Marcin Popielarz prepares a vegetable-forward feast from the idyllic confines of an 18th-century manor. Marcin lower his chops in Michelin-starred kitchens in London and Oslo earlier than returning to Poland to assist put this area on the culinary map. His menu is an evolution of Kashubian cooking, which he describes as easy, seasonal and flavourful, though he says lots of the strategies utilized in Kashubian kitchens — akin to smoking, fermenting, chilly marinating and the fragile use of seasoning — could take cooks eight to 10 years to grasp. The one rule in Marcin’s kitchen: “you need to taste the time [it takes to prepare] in the flavour”. Reflecting this ethos are dishes akin to kale ready 3 ways, involving frying it and extracting oil from its leaves. Then there’s a sweet-and-salty quail with beetroot and an impeccably wealthy duck with hibiscus that takes Marcin 5 days to arrange and is supposed to imitate duck blood soup, a conventional staple. It’s so good — meaty, sharp and candy — that I drink the remaining sauce instantly from the carafe. For dessert, a white blueberry cheesecake substitutes sugar for honey from Marcin’s apiary. It’s a subtly aromatic, barely bitter, creamy finale.