There was a sighting at Pub and Kitchen on Lombard Street - pierogi stuffed with confitted cabbage, fennel, and potato. They disappeared over the summer, but chef John Adams says they're due for a comeback.
One possible tweak? A roasted red pepper and beef-cheek stuffing, which would owe a debt to the exquisitely tender beef-cheek pierogi with wild mushroom and horseradish cream that Cleveland's Iron Chef, Michael Symon, made famous at his Lola. (Then again, they might stay vegetarian, employing another home-kitchen secret, this one from sous chef Rob Marzinsky's mom: shredding boiled cabbage right into the pierogi's mashed potato filling.)
So goes the upward - or maybe it's sideways - mobility of this humblest of comforting Eastern European peasant staples; the miracle of sour cream-infused dough and potato, christened with fried onion, and sanctified in a pool of butter.
It used to be rare to find retail pierogi outside the taprooms and freezer cases of Port Richmond, much less one stuffed with anything but potato and cheese, salty sauerkraut, or, on occasion, mushroom, dried plum, or ground pork.
That's still the canon there where stacks of the Polish American News at Syrenka, the weary steam-table eatery on Richmond Street, were stuffed last week with dates for polka dances and parades saluting, all through October, Polish American Heritage Month.
Syrenka offers big, chewy-doughy pierogi of the classic sort (50 cents extra for a cup of fried onion), as does Krakus Supermarket, across the littered street. A lighter, more flavorful panfried rendition, still hewing to the traditional fillings, comes out of the mom-powered kitchen at the New Wave Cafe, a bar a few blocks west of Syrenka down on Allegheny Avenue.
