Inside My Table #94 | Excerpt
Dining Without Borders—Happiness Is a Warm Pierog
By Dennis Abrams
Whether Russian vareniki or Polish pierogi, this is comfort food par excellance. Of course, everyone needs comfort, so it’s no surprise that nearly every nation has some form of stuffed pasta pocket. Italians have ravioli, the Chinese wontons, Japanese gyoza, Jews kreplach, Turks manti, Swedes kroppkaka. In most cases, the fillings are spiced meat, although potatoes, mushrooms, sauerkraut and fresh cheese are common. Dessert pierogi are filled with fruit.
For my money, as much as I love the international versions, for pure rough comfort nothing comes close to Polish pierogi. And nobody in Houston does it better then Polonia Restaurant.
Sadly, there’s not a lot of competition out there for Houston’s-best-pierogi distinction. Now that the local Russian restaurant scene seems to have dwindled down to just one lonely grocery, Polonia – Houston’s only Polish restaurant – stands as an outpost of all that’s good and steamy-comforting in Eastern European food.
You know you’re in the right place when the first question your waitress asks is, “Do you speak Polish?” The restaurant itself is all cozy, like eating at your grandmother’s house (if, of course, your grandmother was Polish and had two costumed mannequins on display in the corner of her kitchen).
After hearing a rumor that Polonia uses frozen commercial pierogi, I inquired. Yes, Polonia’s pierogi are frozen, imported from a Chicago pierogi maker of some renown. While I was disappointed to learn this – I had visions of Polish grandmothers in the restaurant’s kitchen rolling out dough while listening to polka music – after considering the economics of running a small restaurant, I decided that the pierogi are still good enough that all is forgiven.
The menu at Polonia reads like a list of the greatest hits of Polish food. Finding that nobody at the table but me was particularly fond of herring in any of its forms, we settled on two soups for our starter course. The first was, naturally enough, barszcz, better known as borscht. To my disappointment it wasn’t a “big” borscht as M.F.K. Fisher described the kind of beet soup that’s filled with chunks of meat and vegetables; instead it was the clear beet soup, redolent of nothing but beet. I’m not the world’s biggest fan of beets, but the soup was redeemed by the strangely good “croquette,” a large crêpe rolled around a meat filling, then breaded and fried, that accompanied it
A better soup was the sour rye soup with sausage and egg. Much lighter than I would have imagined, with an almost delicate creamy broth thickened with rye flour in which floated big pieces of kielbasa and hard-boiled egg, it was a meal in a bowl. Served with it: rye bread and containers of garlic-infused butter and … could it have been lard?
The obvious choice for an entrée to share was the combination plate, which promised to serve two, but could easily serve four. It’s a selection of Polonia’s best, including cabbage rolls blessedly not drowned in sauce, which allowed the flavor of the gently cooked cabbage and pork to shine through. There were two giant kielbasa, grilled so that the casing had a perfect snap, bigos (a classic stew of sauerkraut, meats and mushrooms), moist and tasty pork meatloaf, roasted pork loin stuffed with pork, mushrooms, bell peppers and what was said to be jalapeños (although they were fairly undetectable), roasted chicken legs and two ice cream scoops of mashed potatoes. It was a mountain of meaty food. It was not all mind-blowingly good, but it was satisfying, and all that porky goodness put smiles on our faces.
The single best item on the combo plate were the pierogi. There were three kinds: meat, sauerkraut and mushrooms, and potato and cheese. Top of the list was sauerkraut and mushroom, with a combination of tart pickled cabbage and earthy mushroom encased in soft dough, enhanced by a drizzle of butter.
If, after this porcine feast, you can even consider dessert, have the blintz. It’s filled with the same farmer’s cheese found in the pierogi, but this time lightly sweetened and rolled into a thin buttery crêpe. There’s so much cheese it’s oozing out either end. Although fruit is available to add to the blintz, I think it’s perfect just as is.
Need a respite from life’s cold wind? Polonia delivers temporary comfort and sends you on your way feeling like you just got a big hug.
POLONIA RESTAURANT
1900 Blalock at Campbell, 713-464-9900
TIP Open Tuesday through Sunday, Polonia is busiest on Sunday afternoons when the crowd from Our Lady of Czestochowa Church, located just down the street, arrives en masse after Mass.
TIP 2 On Saturday mornings, starting around 10 am, drop by the food shop adjacent to Polonia for Polish jelly donuts (paczki) hot from the fryer. They’re $1.49 each.
