Warmia-Masuria Food & Traditional Cuisine

The food here reflects the landscape and the population change in equal measure.

From the landscape come freshwater fish — pike, zander, eel, tench, bream and vendace from two thousand lakes — along with game from the forests, forest mushrooms and berries, and the honey that the beekeeping tradition of old Prussia left behind.

From the population change comes almost everything else. The people resettled here after 1945 brought the cooking of Vilnius, Lviv and the eastern borderlands, and the region’s kitchens are therefore a mixture of transplanted traditions rather than a single old regional cuisine. Ukrainian dishes from the Operation Vistula deportees sit alongside Lithuanian ones.

What survived of the older Masurian and Warmian cooking is largely potato- and dairy-based, frugal, and closer to East Prussian German practice than to central Polish — sweet-sour combinations, dumplings, and a great deal of soured cream.

Sielawa — vendace, a small lake whitefish — is the regional fish, usually smoked whole over alder and eaten with bread. Smokehouses around the lakes sell it warm and it is the single most characteristic thing to eat here.

Pike and zander from the lakes, baked or fried, appear on every lakeside menu, and eel, once abundant, is now scarce and correspondingly prized.

Dzyndzalki and kartacze, potato dumplings stuffed with meat, are the Warmian and Masurian staple — heavy, served with bacon and cream, and shared with neighbouring Podlachia and Lithuania.

Plinsen or fefernuszki and the sweet-sour fruit soups reflect the old East Prussian palate.

Game: boar, venison and duck, stewed with juniper and forest mushrooms.

Also: kwasnica and sauerkraut dishes; dzionie, a baked barley and offal pudding; and the regional honeys, including heather and buckwheat.

Lakeside smokehouses are the region’s food institution. Small alder-fired smokers by the water sell vendace, eel and trout warm from the rack, and buying fish at one and eating it at a picnic table is the archetypal Masurian meal.

Local markets in Olsztyn, Elk and the lake towns sell forest produce in season — mushrooms, bilberries, cranberries and honey — and the Warmian honey is worth carrying home.

Agritourism farms are the accommodation and the food, cooking what they raise and gather, usually with two meals included and a great deal of it.

On a boat, provisioning is part of the trip: the marinas at Gizycko and Mikolajki have shops, and the smokehouses are placed for exactly this.

Seasonality is absolute. Outside May to September a great many lakeside restaurants are simply shut, and the nearest hot meal may be in a town.

Mushroom picking is a regional pastime from August to October.

Warmia-Masuria is much too cold for wine, and its traditions are honey, beer and fruit.

Mead is the significant one. Old Prussia had a serious beekeeping culture — forest hives in hollowed trunks, and later the movable-frame hive invented by Jan Dzierzon in nearby Silesia — and the region still produces honey in quantity and mead with it. The graded Polish meads, from the light czworniak to the rich poltorak, hold EU protected status, and several Warmian producers make them traditionally.

Nalewki from forest fruit — rowan, bilberry, cranberry, sloe — are the domestic tradition and appear in every guesthouse.

Beer has an East Prussian heritage and there are small breweries around Olsztyn and Elblag; Elblag was a major brewing town under German rule.

Vodka as elsewhere in Poland.

No grape wine is made here, and the few Polish vineyards are far to the south and west.