Paczki appears as a signature dish in 1 Poland cities. See each city's local variant and where to eat it.
Pączki (Polish doughnuts) · Gdańsk
Yeast-raised doughnuts filled with rose-petal jam, plum jam or vanilla cream, deep-fried in lard and dusted with sugar or glazed. The single-day national obsession on Tłusty Czwartek (Fat Thursday).
Pączki are pan-Polish but the Fat Thursday (Tłusty Czwartek) tradition is national, observed the last Thursday before Lent every February. Cukiernia Paradowski in Gdańsk Wrzeszcz, open since spring 1945, runs the city's most-photographed queue every year. The pre-war recipe came with Stefan Paradowski from Warsaw's Ziemiańska pastry shop in 1945, and the bakery still fries them in the original rendered lard. Rose-petal jam is the canonical filling; the modern menu rotates plum, custard and advocaat.
Where to eat in Gdańsk:
- Cukiernia Paradowski
- Pellowski Piekarnia Cukiernia Kawiarnia
- Cukiernia Le Delice