Potatoes didn’t arrive in northern Europe for at least a couple centuries after the reign of Jadwiga of Poland, the female monarch (technically a king) largely held responsible for spicing up her court’s royal cuisine with exotica from her father’s native Hungary. As for most of her subjects in the Middle Ages, it was a lot of groats until the Andean tuber arrived in the late 18th century and took hold with a tenacity that persists today. At least that’s if you’re judging its progress by the menu at Qulinarnia, a Mount Prospect strip-mall storefront that tags itself “modern Polish cuisine.” Eight out of 12 entrees on the menu, plus a la carte pierogi, feature some form of starchy root, set next to or perhaps under some piece of protein. Modern Polish or not, it’s still meat and potatoes.
Entrees are a bit less predictably enjoyable, mostly due to overcooked proteins that are upstaged by their supporting players. That’s the fate that befell a piece of tough, overroasted cod fillet topped with a tangle of lemony sauteed spinach, balanced on a quartet of crispy, finely shredded potato-pancake balls and finished with a creamy shiitake mushroom sauce. It’s also true of some nicely seasoned, slices of duck breast, nonetheless cooked gray in the middle, served with roasted baby carrots and broccoli, topped with a tossing of granola-like gluten-free whole-grain bread croutons, and plated alongside a creamy artichoke mousse. The aforementioned potato-pancake balls assume their original flattened form in a dish that approximates a suboptimal imposter of the Hungarian–style pancake at Jefferson Park’s great but hardly modern Smak-Tak. Here, a thin, bland, and underseasoned goulash rapidly soaks into the crispy potato.
Correction: An earlier version of this story erroneously stated that Poland produces no wine.
1730 W. Golf, Mount Prospect 847-981-0480qulinarnia.com
