Bigos, the hunters' stew, is the slow-cooked sauerkraut, fresh cabbage and mixed meats casserole that improves over three days of reheating. Polish winter on a single plate.

Bigos traces to the 14th-century hunting tradition of the Polish nobility, the original aristocratic 'hunters' stew' cooked on multi-day forest expeditions with whatever game came back. The 17th-century version added sauerkraut, which kept the stew preserved across the days of reheating; this is why bigos still tastes better on the third day than the first. Mickiewicz wrote bigos into the national epic 'Pan Tadeusz' in 1834. Today every Polish restaurant in Warsaw plates bigos, often as a Christmas leftover dish through January, ladled over rye bread.

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