Medieval Polish Gourmet

[JustJohn or JJ]

Only in Brooklyn

Medieval Polish Gourmet at Greenpoint’s Krolewskie Jadlo

If you’re in northern Brooklyn and in the mood for Polish-American comfort food served in an inviting setting, you can do no better than Dziupla (Polish for “tree hollow” or “a car thief’s hideaway”), on Bedford Avenue. If you’re partial to something more traditional and overtly Slavic, head further north, to Karczma (“country tavern”), in the heart of Little Poland, where waitresses in folk dresses dole out bread bowls of white borscht and reflexively address locals in the language of their forebears. But if you are a true gourmand and enjoy abandoning all caution with respect to food, then put yourself at the mercy of Krolewskie Jadlo (“king’s feast”), the sole medievalist eatery in the five boroughs.

All three establishments operate under the aegis of the Nobu-trained restaurateur Krzysztof Drzewiecki, but only Krolewskie Jadlo boasts life-size statues of cuirassed knights. Yet behind the mock solemnity of the décor—rust-stained scimitars, faux-candle chandeliers—is a seriousness of culinary intent. Your first course, whether you want it or not, will be a ramekin of lard, to be dispensed with Polish sourdough bread and salted cucumbers. Of the non-compulsory appetizers, there’s beef tartare and goat-cheese pierogies, but the deep-fried “little bags of pheasant” have perhaps the most character. Flavored with rosemary and thyme and rounded off with a tart black-currant sauce, the four accordion-pleated dumplings huddle on a field of lettuce, like portly bannerets parleying before battle.

For the main event, consider the fifty-two-dollar communal koryto. The long wooden trough arrives overflowing with enough meat—bacon, kebabs, kielbasa, blood sausage, grilled pork shoulder, and beer-baked hock—to pacify any band of mortals hubristic enough to attempt finishing it. The stuffed quail requires the sacrifice of two whole birds, and a comical quantity of buckwheat. Venison-and-walnut meatballs are wedded with black-truffle oil and foraged porcini mushrooms. Another dish resembles a sushi roll, except—in keeping with the spirit of epicurean derring-do—the filling involves dried plum and bacon, and the wrapping is a cut of wild boar.

Many of the offerings recall Greenpoint long before it was Greenpoint, when Keskachauge huntsmen stalked game on this land, when “free-range” and “organic” were the unexamined norm, not marketing tags aimed at a virtuous counterculture. But then dessert arrives and you snap back to the present, grateful for the Chantilly cream and generous sprinkling of powdered sugar atop your cherry-jam crèpe. Modernity, too, has its charms. (Dishes $9-$18.) ♦
This article appears in the print edition of the April 9, 2018, issue, with the headline “Krolewskie Jadlo.”