If you want to envision what Wicker Park once was, pick up Nelson Algren’s The Man with the Golden Arm. If you want to taste what Wicker Park once was, head to the corner of Division and Ashland and go to Podhalanka Polksa.
What the neighborhood once was, back in the 1950’s, was a working class Polish neighborhood (Milwaukee Ave used to be called The Polish Broadway) and the people who lived and worked here were no-nonsense first generation Poles who put in long, grueling days in the city’s factories and came home tired and famished. The food that filled their bellies was the furthest thing imaginable from sushi or tapas. It was the kind of hearty, gut-busting peasant food they still ladle up at Podhalanka Polksa, lots of beef and cabbage, beets and potatoes, and soup. Wonderfully revivifying on a biting cold Chicago evening.
Soup is the obligatory opener at Podhalanka Polksa. The proprietress will walk up to you and tell you, with a deep polish accent, what the soup specials are for the day. If they’re offering white borscht, go for it. It was easily the best of the dishes we sampled, deliciously rich, the flavor of the dill and garlic coming through and filled with chunks of kielbasa. The mushroom barley was much less impressive, not readily discernable from the canned Campbell’s variety, sodium as its main flavor enhancement.
The beet salad was tasty, if a bit mushy. And the cucumber salad with sour cream dressing was cool and enticing but if you’re looking for freshness in any of these offerings you're aiming to high. These dishes are not being made to order but are being spooned up from Tupperware containers, so vegetables are not going to retain their crispness. On the other hand, the restaurant is not trying to resurrect homestyle Polish cooking for the in-crowd. This is the last vestige of a genuine old style Polish diner and its customers are what remain of the immigrants who used to populate this neighborhood.
Take a look around. You are in another time. The walls are lined with weird tsotschkes, cheap souvenir store dolls, plastic flowers and pictures of the Pope. In the middle of the room, for no apparent reason, there is a wire carousel stocked with Polish Christmas cards. A big green furnace holds a position of prominence among the tables, exuding all the charm of an ice machine. The service is laconic and rote. The lighting is harsh. Coffee sits on Bunsen burners and grows bitter. A TV set provides the only ambient noise. They are not striving to attract new customers. They are just doing what they've always done, which for many decades has been good enough.
My boiled beef was a bit too chewy and hard to swallow. My wife’s beef stew, however, was drenched in a medley of flavors - onions, carrots, celery and horseradish – and was hard to put down. I could imagine how satisfying this would be on an empty stomach after a hard day of manual labor. On such stuff was the city built.
Podhalanka Polksa is curiously hard to find. It hides in plain site. There are only two small windows to the street and when it closes at 8pm an accordion gate suggests the place is out of business. There is a shabby plastic sign over the door of the kind commonly associated with defunct enterprises in changing neighborhoods. All of this can throw you off the scent, but if you persevere, you’ll find it, near the corner of Division and Ashland, directly across from Algren Square, which is somehow appropriate.
Nelson Algren wrote of a Chicago that was tough and gritty. His novels were set right here on Division Street and his heroes were working class Joe's who frequented diners like Podhalanka Polksa. If you cotton to a bit of living history, check it out. But don’t expect them to make any concessions to your heightened sense of refinement. They will do what they’ve always done and when they no longer have enough customers to do it, they will simply shut the doors, like so many others have done before, and another piece of our neighborhood’s history will be gone.
Podhalanka Polksa
1549 W. Division
773-486-6655 / Reservations Accepted
Hours: Open for breakfast, lunch and dinner 7 days
Features: No alcohol
Avg Price for Two Including Tax $30
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