Vodka & Food

The city's best-known dish is simply called Pyry z gzikiem, boiled potatoes with a quark made from sour cream, onions, and herbs. Potato and potato vodka come from the same field. That's why a cold shot pairs well with the dish's earthiness, without overpowering it.

Szare kluski too, gray dumplings made from raw, grated potatoes, are served with bacon cubes and browned onions. They draw their color and texture entirely from the tuber. An ice-cold potato vodka alongside feels here less like an accompaniment and more like a second form of the same raw material. This connection to the potato runs through the entire meal.

Things get heartier with Kaczka poznańska, roast duck with apple and marjoram, a Sunday dish in many families across the region. The richness of the meat calls for something clear and cold in between. A dry rye vodka like Wyborowa cuts through this layer of fat more cleanly than a sweeter potato spirit would.

A starter often served is Czernina, a dark soup made from duck blood and root vegetables, which strikes many outsiders as unfamiliar at first. Vodka isn't considered mandatory here with the meal. It's one of several ways to round out the soup's intense, slightly sweet-sour flavor, especially on cold winter days.

As a general rule in the region: cold, clear spirits with hearty, often fatty dishes, never the other way around. Anyone wanting to understand why the potato ends up both on the plate and in the glass here need only try Pyry z gzikiem, just before the glass arrives.