Greater Poland Food & Traditional Cuisine

Greater Poland cooking is plainer and more frugal than the south’s, which is entirely in keeping with the regional character, and it centres on two things: the potato and the pig.

The potato is so central that Poznanians are nicknamed pyry after the local word for it, and there are more potato dishes here than anywhere else in Poland.

The other defining influence is German, from the Prussian century: sour-sweet combinations, sausages of specific named types, and a baking tradition that is closer to Germany than to the Polish east.

Duck is the regional festive meat rather than the carp or goose of other regions, roasted with apples and served with dumplings and red cabbage.

And there is one absolute regional speciality — the Saint Martin’s croissant — which is protected by EU designation, made to a defined recipe, and consumed in extraordinary quantity on a single day each year.

Rogal swietomarcinski, the Saint Martin’s croissant, is the region’s protected treasure: layered yeast-and-butter pastry filled with white poppy seed, almonds, raisins and candied fruit, iced and scattered with nuts. It is made to a certified recipe by licensed bakers, and on 11 November Poznan eats several hundred tonnes of them in a single day.

Pyry z gzikiem is the everyday regional dish: hot boiled or jacket potatoes with gzik, a curd cheese beaten with soured cream, chives, radish and onion. Simple, cheap and genuinely good.

Kaczka z jablkami, duck roasted with apples, served with pyzy potato dumplings and red cabbage — the Sunday and festive plate.

Zurek z biala kielbasa, sour rye soup with white sausage, is eaten across Poland but is a particular fixture here.

Also: plendze, the local potato pancakes; szagowka potato noodles; parzybroda, a cabbage and potato soup whose name means scald-beard; and the regional smoked sausages, several with protected status.

Stary Rynek and Plac Wielkopolski markets in Poznan sell the regional produce — curd cheese for gzik, smoked sausage, forest mushrooms and berries in season — and are used by residents rather than visitors.

Saint Martin’s Day is the food event of the year. Queues form outside the certified bakeries on 11 November from early morning, the parade goes down the street named after the saint, and the croissants are sold by weight from stalls the length of it.

Milk bars survive in Poznan and serve the potato dishes cheaply, which is the right way to try them.

The Croissant Museum on the market square runs demonstrations in Poznan dialect, with audience participation, and manages to be both a tourist attraction and a genuine piece of local culture.

Trade fairs bring a flush of restaurant activity; the city’s dining scene is better than its size suggests partly because of them.

Mushroom picking in the pine forests from August to October is a regional pastime.

Greater Poland is not a wine region, and its drinking traditions are grain, fruit and — distinctively — mead.

Mead has a particular association here. The Piast rulers drank it, the region’s forests and lime trees supported beekeeping for centuries, and Polish mead — graded by how much water is added to the honey, from the rich poltorak down — holds EU protected status. Several producers in and around the region still make it by traditional methods, ageing the strongest grades for years.

Vodka as elsewhere in Poland, and the region has historic distilleries.

Beer has a real local tradition, and Poznan’s Lech brewery is one of the country’s largest; the craft scene in the city is strong.

Nalewki, home-made fruit infusions, are the domestic custom and are brought out for guests.

A handful of experimental vineyards have appeared in the warmer, drier parts of the region, taking advantage of exactly the low rainfall that troubles the farmers.