Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we give our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems.)
A quick internet search for “Polish restaurants in the Denver area” offers a pretty meager list: Polish Pantry in Superior is a bakery selling paczki (a filled doughnut); Pierogies Factory in Wheat Ridge is more of a fast-food/catering/food truck operation; and Red Square in Larimer Square calls itself “European” but is decidedly more Russian than Polish.
The only full-menu Polish eatery in these parts: Cracovia Polish-American Restaurant and Bar in Westminster.
I grew up eating Polish food: pierogi, both potato and cheese and cabbage varieties; kielbasa made at Chicopee Provision, a meat processing plant in my Western Massachusetts hometown; and golombki (cabbage rolls). Around the holidays, dad would have his borcht (beet soup) and mom her kapusta (cabbage stew), and we would devour our neighbor’s homemade babka (a sweet egg bread with golden raisins).
For decades now, with the help of family and friends, I have made my own pierogi every fall, and golombki at least once a year. I’ve attempted babka a few times, and am close to figuring it out. The first attempt resulted in one gigantic loaf that oozed over the sides of a cookie sheet and onto the bottom of the oven. It was the babka that ate Denver.
I don’t think I’ll ever run out of pierogi in my freezer, no matter how many dozens I share with others, but a recent hankering for kapusta led me to make the drive to Westminster for a taste.
Hope Nearhood and her husband Yancy dine at Cracovia in Westminster, Colorado on Friday, March 10, 2023. Cracovia is a polish-american restaurant that opened in 2008. (Photo by Rebecca Slezak/Special to The Denver Post)
On that Wednesday, a strong customer turnout and lots of laughter gave off a welcoming vibe. There was no piped-in polka music; just big band and light jazz, ragtime piano and 1960s reruns of “Password” with Betty White and Alan Ludden playing on a smallish TV over the bar.
“There’s cabbage and sauerkraut all over this menu,” said my dining partner. Um, yeah. In colder and poorer parts of Eastern Europe, that’s about all they could afford to eat. A Polish proverb: “A farmer without cabbage has an empty stomach.”
And they also liked their vodka (to keep warm in the winters, you know). Cracovia has 65 varieties of Lester’s House Infused Vodka on its menu, and offers a flight of six shots for $38. (I’m sure those contributed to the loud laughter on that weekday.) Some of the flavors that likely didn’t originate in the old country: toasted marshmallow, peanut butter and cupcake.
The restaurant boasts that all of its dishes are made from scratch, what chef Jutta Dellert calls “grandma’s comfort food.”
We started with a bowl of Cracovia’s version of kapusta, called kapusniak ($13); a plate of Placek Zbojnicki (vegetable pancakes, $29); and then treated ourselves to “A Taste of Poland” dinner: three pierogi, one golabki (cabbage roll), one kroket (croquette), a kielbasa link, one “fall-off-the-bone BBQ pork rib” and horseradish beets ($43).
Part of A Taste of Poland dinner for one: three pierogi, one golabki (cabbage roll), one kroket (croquette), a kielbasa link, and a “fall-off-the-bone BBQ pork rib. It was accompanied by a side of horseradish beets, all for $43. (Barbara Ellis, The Denver Post)
Obviously, we all have an attachment to the cultural dishes we grew up with. Still, comparisons to Babci’s (grandma’s) cooking can’t be avoided. For my taste, the kapusniak was overly salted, the pierogi were a bit small and the dough somewhat tough. (But that’s understandable: The fillings are made in-house and then taken to the nearby Pierogies Factory to get wrapped in dough in a commercial machine, so the dough has to stand up to rougher handling.) The meat filling in the golabki wasn’t as moist as my own, so could have had a more generous serving of both the mushroom and tomato sauces to compensate.
We loved the smoky kiebasa link, especially when topped with the house-made, spicy-sweet mustard sauce (available for purchase at $6.95 per jar).
And the horseradish beets? One bite sent me down memory lane, to myself as a 12-year-old Catholic girl toting an Easter basket filled with a huge kielbasa, dyed eggs, a jar of holy water, a dish of salt and a babka. So good.
The dessert: paczki, a warm, yeasty, not overly sweet donut with plum filling, topped with powdered sugar and served with dollops of whipped cream, provided a delightful finish.
Paczki, a warm, yeasty, not overly sweet donut with plum filling, topped with powdered sugar and served with dollops of whipped cream provided a delightful finish to a meal at Cracovia Restaurant & Bar. (Barbara Ellis, The Denver Post)
Our waitress, Alina from Ukraine, was attentive and polite, informed about the menu and responsive to our questions. And the serving sizes were generous: The majority of diners walked out with to-go boxes.
In March 2024, Guy Fieri of “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives” was at Cracovia, dining on the placek zbojnicki (potato and onion pancakes) and schabowy (boneless pork chop). He called the pancakes “perfect,” and on the show’s website described the pierogi as “pure comfort — pillowy, butter and filled with love.”
Are Cracovia’s dishes as good as Babci’s?
Of course not, but they’ll do.
Cracovia Polish-American Restaurant & Bar, 8121 W. 94th Ave., Westminster; 303-484-9388; cracoviarestaurant.com
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Dining and Cooking