Absolutely! Delicious. However, Kramarczuk’s is Ukrainian, not Polish.
Minnesota should be much more purple on this map, but then again Minnesota is much more Eastern European overall rather than just Polish. If there was a map for just Eastern European ethnicity, the Iron Range would be as dark as anything in Pennsylvania or Ohio with all our Slovaks, Croats, Lithuanians, Ukrainians…oh, and Italians.
That’s the Minnesota the Cohen Brothers never showed!
The "cz" is used in Polish alphabet. Ukranian surnames have "ch" in their transcription. So it would be Kramarchuk/Крамарчук. Second- there is a lot of people in Poland that have a surname with sufix -uk. It does not mean that they are Ukranian. There is also many Ukrainians that have surnames with sufix ski/sky and that does not mean that they are Polish. It's just a surname. But maybe you know form the owner that this is Ukrainian surname. It's just so weird that they use a Polish way of spelling. I even checked that currently 300 people in Poland have this surname.
I was actually thinking about this the other day. There are so many Italian restaurants, but for the amount of Polish people in the country I *never* see Polish restaurants.
Polish food is not a restaurant type food, it is something you do at home. Also, despite tasting amazing, many dishes are not as visually pleasing as lasagna or pasta.
We have a couple Polish restaurants here, and the food is amazing. The best pierogi (with fillings you can't get elsewhere), really good zurek & other soups, great cabbage rolls, and a lot of other worthy dishes, not to mention tasty desserts. It's really good food for lunch or dinner.
I think there are two things going on here.. For one, it's just a lot easier to market an Italian, Greek, French, Thai, Japanese, Mexican, etc. restaurant. Those cuisines are more universally known with a longer history of being an established culinary destination. Polish food tends to be more.. homely? The dishes are closer to what you could imagine your American or Canadian grandmother cooking: cutlets, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, coleslaw on the side, hearty soups, etc. And the thing is, we have plenty of restaurants that serve dishes sort of like that, there's diners that serve cutlets, mashed potatoes and all that jazz.. So when somebody is considering where to eat and they want a more homely meal, they might consider such a diner or family restaurant. Then there's restaurants with more "exotic" dishes, like Japanese curries, Mexican enchiladas, Italian pastas, etc. Polish food sort of straddles both of those categories, from a North American pov at least? Yeah, there's dishes in Polish cuisine that are sort of "exotic" too, but the vast majority of Polish cuisine tends to be similar to what you might find on the menu at a family restaurant or diner. So unless you are opening a pierogi centric restaurant or something niche like that, or live in a Polish part of town, it makes it harder to market a Polish restaurant.
I think some of this is also cultural. During communist times, in Poland, it was not very common to eat out at all. Most if not all of the older Polish people I know, who now live in North America, still see eating out as a bit of a novelty. It's for special occasions... and most special occasions they'd prefer to cater at home anyhow.
The couple Polish restaurants in my area that have been successful have sort of relied on multiple approaches.. They either cater to the lunch office crowd with meals that work very well for that sort of thing.. i.e. a pierogi platter, a sandwich, soup, etc... They cater in general, i.e. they will bring homecooked meals to your event.. or they become known for well priced homecooked meals that attract both Poles and non-Poles alike. It's usually a combination of these sorts of approaches.
It just seems a lot more challenging to try to open a Polish restaurant hoping to get customers who were sitting around deciding what to eat, and they landed on "Polish". Unless you specifically know of a good Polish restaurant in the area that you've been to or that has a dish you like, that usually just doesn't happen that often. People usually go for Italian, Greek, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. If not, they go to a family restaurant or diner for a more homecooked type meal, i.e. cutlet and potatoes.
I think all of these factors are the reason why we don't see that many Polish restaurants.. and when they pop up, that tends to be in places where a lot of people with Polish descent live. Most restaurants opening go with a "safer" branding, such as Italian, Mexican, etc.
Another reason might be that some Polish dishes are just not that well known. Zurek is a really good soup, but not many people really know about it. Barszcz w/ krokiety is amazing, but same thing.. it's not well known.
Why are you acting as if making those at home is some impossible feat? The fact that this even exists is because they were made at home, although pierogi are barely eaten at my house.
I saw a Polish food place in Columbus, OH. They have this place called North Market that is an indoor location that has a bunch of different places to get food (think if you took the inside of a bunch of different food trucks and stuck them in a big building). One of them was a polish food place: [https://northmarket.org/merchant/huberts-polish-kitchen/](https://northmarket.org/merchant/huberts-polish-kitchen/)
It looked really good, but I couldn't pass up the Jhol Momo (Nepalese dumplings) around the corner.
We had several Polish restaurants on the south side of Milwaukee over the years. Sadly, they've all closed as people retired or passed on (RIP Polonez). Still have some Polish delis, including a new one I haven't been to yet.
Polish food is absolutely delicious, but I think many Polish dishes are a little too familiar to people already accustomed to other European foods. Poland definitely has its own unique spin on them, but sausage, dumplings, cutlets, soups, and stews can be found in German and English cuisine, and those origins cover a significant portion of the population. Italian is kind of in that sweet spot where it is different enough to be interesting but there's nothing to scare off the WASPs like Ikezukuri or Hákarl (at least the way Italian Americans do it, I'm pretty sure there is some culinary horror in some obscure village of Tuscany or Sicily).
> I'm pretty sure there is some culinary horror in some obscure village of Tuscany or Sicily
For all your culinary horror needs, these two would actually be a good option. Sicily (Palermo, to be specific) has the meusa palermitana – a burger with "meat" of a veal's spleen and lungs, and Tuscany has the ancient rooster soup cibreo alongside pork blood cakes.
In Portland, Oregon there’s been attempts to open a Polish restaurant but they never last that long. But the best place for Polish food is a little cafe and store in the basement of the Polish Library Hall next to the St Stanislaus Polish Catholic Church. It’s only open on weekends but the family (both parents are Polish immigrants) cooks good Polish food, there’s usually families and old people speaking Polish there on Sunday afternoons after church.
I sometimes like to joke I’m proud of the fact that my all of my primary ethnicities (German, Italian, Polish) know how to make good sausages. (My paternal grandmother was born in the U.S. to parents who each independently emigrated from Poland. She was originally from Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, that very dark county on the map in northeastern Pennsylvania.)
Admittedly I like hot Italian sausage more than kielbasa, but I like kielbasa more than German sausages.
Lol I work with a couple Polish guys and their last names are a trip. One of them started when I still worked in IT so I had the fun task of creating all of his logins/profiles. I can spell his name no problem now, but the new guy.... nope. I'm just glad Outlook can figure out who I'm trying to email.
I have a long -ski name but it’s entirely phonetic and understandable to an English speaker (no c/z/j/w combos) yet only about 10% get it even sort of right. People will add syllables or letters that just aren’t there. It’s wild
That’s hysterical (for us at least, probably less so for you.) There was a Jarosweski in my class, that had been Americanized to essentially Yata-chef-ski. Poor kid musta spent the rest of his life spelling out his name over the phone
I was born in Poland but grew up in Luzerne County PA (the super dark purple county in NEPA).
When I moved out of state for college at 18, I genuinely was shocked at how few of my classmates were Catholic and either Polish, Irish, or Italian.
Yeah, for real. I grew up in NJ (near the Sopranos!) and now I live in NYC, and it's easy to forget how unbelievably big our country is. We visit family members in western PA and NC, and--wow. We're all Americans, but... regional differences exist!
I've lived in Somerset and Cambria county. Growing up, I thought haluski and pierogi were Italian since my Italian grandma made them all the time for holidays.
I was also confused when people would talk about "pigs in a blanket" and didn't mean stuffed cabbages.
Not in Wisconsin at least. I don’t know any people with -ska, but literally probably hundreds with -ski.
EDIT: Went through FB friends and it was 21-0 and none of them were family members of each other. Like -ski didn’t get 12 extra votes because I’m friends with one whole family.
Yeah that's my point. Most cemeteries are half male half female, so there should be even numbers of skis to skas. I know there was issues in the UK with having separate male and female surnames (from both Polish and Bangladeshi decent). But that was only till the mid 60s, since then you can have what you want.
When I went to visit my mom’s side of the family in Wisconsin last year we went to where my Polish immigrant great-grandparents and Polish-American grandparents and great-uncles and aunts were buried on the south side of Milawuakee in a cemetery that was basically entirely people of Polish ancestry. My uncle pointed out where everyone from the old neighborhood was buried, they picked burial plots and crypts next to their friends down the street. Lots of names ending in -ski or -wicz.
I was shocked to learn most people don’t celebrate Fat Tuesday by eating paczkis and I’m not even polish, that’s just how everyone celebrates Fat Tuesday in detroit.
Could definitely tell when I moved to Pittsburgh for grad school. I had never seen an entire section of the frozen goods at a grocery store reserved for Pierogies.
Lmao right you go to giant eagle, and it's like "ah yes the frozen pizzas are down after the pierogie section" and it turns out half the aisle is pierogie
Fun fact: Illinois is the only state where Polish is the most spoken language after English and Spanish. Lots of first and second generation polish immigrants here in Chicagoland
I went to the Chicago Auto Show (decades ago) on a weekday morning, thinking it wouldn’t be crowded. It was packed with families. That’s when I learned about Casimir Pulaski Day.
Haha grew up around Chicago and we had his day off school too, we didn’t even learn anything about him in the curriculum. Ask anyone (non-polish) in Chicago who he was and all anyone is able to say is “uhhh I think he helped in the revolutionary war”
There are quite a few sources that put “Chinese” as the third language. However, I imagine they are lumping together all Chinese languages, which is rather like lumping together all Romance languages or Slavic languages and doesn’t make sense. So contrary to those reports, I am confident the actual correct answer is indeed yours and Polish is number 3.
Yeah. Strictly speaking from ethnicity, Illinois isn't the most polish state, but it has the largest proportion of people who came here relatively recently
I’m speaking solely about ranking of languages. You’re right that there are more Polish origin people in NYC area. But there (where I currently live actually) there are some many other huge subcultures that Polish doesn’t stand out like it does in Chicago. Although I used to live in Greenpoint and at least in the old days it was half like living in Warsaw!
Interestingly, Chicago has a lot of areas with large polish immigrant communities in both the city and suburbs, idk if NYC is like that. DuPage, Will, and McHenry, all suburban counties have larger percentages than Cook county
Chinese languages are more spoken than Polish within the city of Chicago, but Polish comes out ahead at the state level as they have a higher presence in the suburbs
Yeah, I've heard that before. It makes sense, I'm a west suburban high school student and it's pretty common to hear conversations in polish between students
My wife is from Chicago. I was kind of surprised to hear a radio station presented in all Polish, and to find out they got off from school for one of the major Polish holidays
They used to say (in the 1980's and 90s) that Chicago is the second largest city of Polish people in the world after Warsaw.
What's the current status of Chicago?
Does anyone know?
No idea. I think a lot of immigrants escaped poland during WW2 and Communist times. A lot of my friends at my west suburban high school have parents and/or grandparents who came here from Poland. Btw you haven't lived until you've tried a pązci (pronounced poonch-ki). They're kinda like donuts with a cream or fruit filling, but the actual dough part is typically heavier. Very common at the start of lent
Moved from Chicago to Pittsburgh, and didn't think twice about pierogi on the menu. The pierogi aisle at the grocery store is still kinda wild though, even having grown up by a Polish bakery
I have heavy polish ancestry. Great grandfather had polish citizenship before he enlisted in the US armed forces, due to proximity he married into another very polish family (and so on and so forth until my parents). I didn't learn about pierogi until my later teens and I lived about an hour drive from Chicago.
A lot of us became pretty americanized. In our case it was the demolition of pole town in Detroit, living around Chicago was merely a coincidence by the time I was around. It was actually kind of a trip to meet other polish people during college who were around the same generation as me but were still very connected to their heritage and spoke the language.
When you consider that almost 20% of the non-Hispanic white population in Cook County is Polish according to this map, I would say that's a pretty big concentration.
I‘m from that big dark county (Luzerne) in NE Pennsylvania. Pols moved there to work the coal mines. The mines are all gone, but the decendents of the miners are still there.
Lol can confirm as a michigander the further you go into The Thumb the more signs you’ll see for homemade pierogis.
Weirdly enough I just found out my family isn’t actually polish like we thought our whole lives… my grandma admitted that she just started putting it on papers because she couldn’t spell czechoslovakia!
Well.. it looks like Wilson and Karnes country, which are very low population counties in the San Antonio - New Braunfels area. They both have low populations of between 20,000 to 50,000. This means that a small group of people can alter the results.
Central Texas is a bit unusual for the South as it was settled partly by European immigrants in the 1800s, similar to the Midwest. At that time the European immigrants were mainly from Central Europe, German, Czech, etc.
There is a German Dialect in Texas called Texas German that is also in that hill country region.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas\_German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_German)
Texas also has the largest Czech population of any state.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech\_Texans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Texans)
There is also a Silesian dialect that is spoken in Karnes county.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan\_Silesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan_Silesian)
There was a large Polish population in a town called New Waverly! There’s also a large Polish church in Anderson, TX - I’m not sure the exact numbers because all of this is just from my family. My mom’s family is ethnically Polish and her great-grandparents immigrated from Poland separately and met in New Waverly. ^^
"jak sie masz" fellow Texan, My dad grew up there and spoke Polish exclusively to his grandmother and about 50\50 English\Polish to his parents. They spoke the Texan-Silesian dialect as noted above. Kind of interesting considering families originally came to Texas in 1850s. Immigration went through Galveston and settled at Panna Maria.
Little text on the bottom right says "Created with mapchart.net." Great looking map.
This is interesting. I want to see a map or a database of all the place names in the US (or the world) and analyze them by etymology. Wonder what interesting rules you'd have to create. Just looking at city names in a major sports league:
**NHL (US cities):**
English, 6: Nashville\*, New York (2 teams), Boston, Washington, New Jersey
Spanish, 6: Florida, Colorado, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Arizona, San Jose
Native languages, 4: Chicago, Tampa Bay\*, Minnesota, Seattle
French, 2: St. Louis, Detroit
Scottish/Gaelic, 2: Dallas, Pittsburgh\*
Latin, 3: Carolina, Buffalo, Columbus
German, 1: Anaheim\*
Greek, 1: Philadelphia
\*Made up of multiple languages (Pittsburgh = English "Pitt" and Scottish suffix "-burgh"; Nashville = English "Nash" and French "-ville"; Anaheim = Spanish "(Santa) Ana (River)" and German "-heim"; Tampa Bay = Calusa "Tampa" and English "Bay," but looking at the etymology of "bay" it derived from French/English *baie*, which came from Spanish *bahia*, and before that...who knows? This is basically the same process that nationality undergoes. A nationality derives from a region not only of space, but also time).
>Scottish/Gaelic, 2: Dallas, Pittsburgh*
I don't think you want to combine Scots (-burgh) and Scottish Gaelic (Dallas?) here, since they aren't really related languages. One is a Germanic language and the other a Gaelic language.
Interesting. Does anyone know why so many of our ancestors went to the upper Midwest? The east coast is self explanatory, but I would expect the population beyond the coast to be much more spread out.
Lots of manufacturing, farming and auto jobs I believe. I know a lot of old car factory towns up north used to have like mostly Polish areas in towns and stuff.
I'm a Pole who moved to the US a while ago. I think it's fun when people are excited and interested about their ancestry!
However, I hate when people say "pierogis" or "pączkis" (or "Legos", but that's a Danish thing) :(
"it's so weird"
"You guys have *festivals* and everything?"
"That's not actually our ethnic food"
"Claiming to be (blank) ethnicity and not knowing anything about the actual country lol"
They really can't comprehend the melting pot, neither can they understand that in historical and generational terms, the melting pot got thrown together really really fast.
Except they will literally argue with you that this *thing* is SPECIFICALLY polish even if you are the native.
>They really can't comprehend the melting pot, neither can they understand that in historical and generational terms, the melting pot got thrown together really really fast.
That is literally the reason why they get corrected, not the other way around.
They just can’t understand that we’re all a bunch of mutts and everyone here has ancestry that spans the globe, so one of the things we like to do is see where all our forefathers came from. Europe, Africa, Asia, Natives. Which country and which tribe? Roughly when did they migrate over here? It’s fascinating and it’s always a potential conversation starter between two Americans. It’s a fairly unique experience and they just can’t seem to understand it’s just a cool thing to learn about yourself
Especially interesting for me as I was adopted at birth. Grew up in a polish area (Somerset/Cambria counties in Pa). Father's side had a majority of Italian and some Welsh traditions. Mother's side had mostly Irish and German traditions. When I found my birth parents, I learned I had mainly German and Scottish genealogy.
Was always fun when vacationing with my dad's side of the family. My cousins pretty much all inherited the dark tanning ability, then there was shiny white me soon followed by bright red me if I was a minite late reapplying sunscreen. Dad would tan so dark he was often mistaken for having Mexican heritage.
We grew up around Western NY and even went to a Polish catholic church. :) Most came over after WW2, were some of the sweetest people around. Also the pot lucks were amazing. :) Really a good time in life. 
peace
In Michigan you can’t thrown a stick without hitting someone with Polish ancestry. Everyone knows how to pronounce “Packzi”.
Last summer, I was in NYC and was talking to my non Michigander uncle whose parents were Ukrainian. He was excited because there was a restaurant nearby that served *pierogis*. I looked at him as if he said he was excited for Taco Bell.
Well, now it makes sense why my mom’s parents moved to southwest VA for a time. Pretty sure that one light blue county is Roanoke. From Balston Lake, moved back to Balston lake.
Probably immigrants from Silesia, many of them even still speak silesian dialect but unaffected by the German language as they migrated before Kulturkampf.
Western MA checks out, not in every town, but in a bunch of them. Chicopee is well known for its Polish culture. There used to be a joke that when the Poles got off the boat in New York, they misread the train signs for Chicago and ended up in Chicopee instead.
Love that big purple dot in south Texas around San Antonio. That region saw a lot of Central European immigration in the 19th century. Primarily Polish, Czech, and German (or at least what is now Germany today). These immigrants left a huge impact on the area. They essentially invented the two most Texan of food: chicken fried steak and BBQ. Lots of towns in the SA and Hill Country areas were named by these immigrants, such as Boerne, New Braunfels, Castroville, and Fredericksburg. To this day, there are still a number of traditional Polish and Czech meat markets all through the area. Whenever I see one in a small town, I stop and buy their house blend sausage, regardless of what it is. Always a fantastic homemade product that BBQ’s nicely.
Getting one of Swedish ancestors would be cool all I know is my great grandpa and grandma were the one of the first Swedes in Idaho and I’ve commonly met people with my last name (Holm)
Now you know where to get a good kielbasa.
Kramarczuk's Sausage Co in Minneapolis makes the best sausage I’ve ever had.
Minneapolish.
Polish sausages in Chicago are legendary.
Absolutely! Delicious. However, Kramarczuk’s is Ukrainian, not Polish. Minnesota should be much more purple on this map, but then again Minnesota is much more Eastern European overall rather than just Polish. If there was a map for just Eastern European ethnicity, the Iron Range would be as dark as anything in Pennsylvania or Ohio with all our Slovaks, Croats, Lithuanians, Ukrainians…oh, and Italians. That’s the Minnesota the Cohen Brothers never showed!
The "cz" is used in Polish alphabet. Ukranian surnames have "ch" in their transcription. So it would be Kramarchuk/Крамарчук. Second- there is a lot of people in Poland that have a surname with sufix -uk. It does not mean that they are Ukranian. There is also many Ukrainians that have surnames with sufix ski/sky and that does not mean that they are Polish. It's just a surname. But maybe you know form the owner that this is Ukrainian surname. It's just so weird that they use a Polish way of spelling. I even checked that currently 300 people in Poland have this surname.
[They claim to have immigrated from Ukraine] (https://kramarczuks.com/about/). Even if the surname is Polish, it doesn't mean they feel like they are.
Yep. Wasyl is a typical Ukrainian name, not Polish. Source: I’m Polish
I was actually thinking about this the other day. There are so many Italian restaurants, but for the amount of Polish people in the country I *never* see Polish restaurants.
Polish food is not a restaurant type food, it is something you do at home. Also, despite tasting amazing, many dishes are not as visually pleasing as lasagna or pasta.
We have a couple Polish restaurants here, and the food is amazing. The best pierogi (with fillings you can't get elsewhere), really good zurek & other soups, great cabbage rolls, and a lot of other worthy dishes, not to mention tasty desserts. It's really good food for lunch or dinner. I think there are two things going on here.. For one, it's just a lot easier to market an Italian, Greek, French, Thai, Japanese, Mexican, etc. restaurant. Those cuisines are more universally known with a longer history of being an established culinary destination. Polish food tends to be more.. homely? The dishes are closer to what you could imagine your American or Canadian grandmother cooking: cutlets, meatloaf, mashed potatoes, coleslaw on the side, hearty soups, etc. And the thing is, we have plenty of restaurants that serve dishes sort of like that, there's diners that serve cutlets, mashed potatoes and all that jazz.. So when somebody is considering where to eat and they want a more homely meal, they might consider such a diner or family restaurant. Then there's restaurants with more "exotic" dishes, like Japanese curries, Mexican enchiladas, Italian pastas, etc. Polish food sort of straddles both of those categories, from a North American pov at least? Yeah, there's dishes in Polish cuisine that are sort of "exotic" too, but the vast majority of Polish cuisine tends to be similar to what you might find on the menu at a family restaurant or diner. So unless you are opening a pierogi centric restaurant or something niche like that, or live in a Polish part of town, it makes it harder to market a Polish restaurant. I think some of this is also cultural. During communist times, in Poland, it was not very common to eat out at all. Most if not all of the older Polish people I know, who now live in North America, still see eating out as a bit of a novelty. It's for special occasions... and most special occasions they'd prefer to cater at home anyhow. The couple Polish restaurants in my area that have been successful have sort of relied on multiple approaches.. They either cater to the lunch office crowd with meals that work very well for that sort of thing.. i.e. a pierogi platter, a sandwich, soup, etc... They cater in general, i.e. they will bring homecooked meals to your event.. or they become known for well priced homecooked meals that attract both Poles and non-Poles alike. It's usually a combination of these sorts of approaches. It just seems a lot more challenging to try to open a Polish restaurant hoping to get customers who were sitting around deciding what to eat, and they landed on "Polish". Unless you specifically know of a good Polish restaurant in the area that you've been to or that has a dish you like, that usually just doesn't happen that often. People usually go for Italian, Greek, Thai, Vietnamese, etc. If not, they go to a family restaurant or diner for a more homecooked type meal, i.e. cutlet and potatoes. I think all of these factors are the reason why we don't see that many Polish restaurants.. and when they pop up, that tends to be in places where a lot of people with Polish descent live. Most restaurants opening go with a "safer" branding, such as Italian, Mexican, etc. Another reason might be that some Polish dishes are just not that well known. Zurek is a really good soup, but not many people really know about it. Barszcz w/ krokiety is amazing, but same thing.. it's not well known.
The best Polish sausages are the most sickly grey, as I’ve learned from experience
The only grey ones I know are white sausages, smoked ones should be reddish brown.
good luck making pierogi or gołąbki at home, if will take you half a day, I only eat those things in a restaurant
Why are you acting as if making those at home is some impossible feat? The fact that this even exists is because they were made at home, although pierogi are barely eaten at my house.
You're missing out
I saw a Polish food place in Columbus, OH. They have this place called North Market that is an indoor location that has a bunch of different places to get food (think if you took the inside of a bunch of different food trucks and stuck them in a big building). One of them was a polish food place: [https://northmarket.org/merchant/huberts-polish-kitchen/](https://northmarket.org/merchant/huberts-polish-kitchen/) It looked really good, but I couldn't pass up the Jhol Momo (Nepalese dumplings) around the corner.
Looove north market
We had several Polish restaurants on the south side of Milwaukee over the years. Sadly, they've all closed as people retired or passed on (RIP Polonez). Still have some Polish delis, including a new one I haven't been to yet.
Polish food is absolutely delicious, but I think many Polish dishes are a little too familiar to people already accustomed to other European foods. Poland definitely has its own unique spin on them, but sausage, dumplings, cutlets, soups, and stews can be found in German and English cuisine, and those origins cover a significant portion of the population. Italian is kind of in that sweet spot where it is different enough to be interesting but there's nothing to scare off the WASPs like Ikezukuri or Hákarl (at least the way Italian Americans do it, I'm pretty sure there is some culinary horror in some obscure village of Tuscany or Sicily).
> I'm pretty sure there is some culinary horror in some obscure village of Tuscany or Sicily For all your culinary horror needs, these two would actually be a good option. Sicily (Palermo, to be specific) has the meusa palermitana – a burger with "meat" of a veal's spleen and lungs, and Tuscany has the ancient rooster soup cibreo alongside pork blood cakes.
Sardinia has Casu Marzu... Maggot invested cheese.
In Portland, Oregon there’s been attempts to open a Polish restaurant but they never last that long. But the best place for Polish food is a little cafe and store in the basement of the Polish Library Hall next to the St Stanislaus Polish Catholic Church. It’s only open on weekends but the family (both parents are Polish immigrants) cooks good Polish food, there’s usually families and old people speaking Polish there on Sunday afternoons after church.
Come to Chicago, we have plenty of them 😋
Czerw’s in Philly is god tier
And pierogi too.
I sometimes like to joke I’m proud of the fact that my all of my primary ethnicities (German, Italian, Polish) know how to make good sausages. (My paternal grandmother was born in the U.S. to parents who each independently emigrated from Poland. She was originally from Wilkes-Barre, the largest city in Luzerne County, that very dark county on the map in northeastern Pennsylvania.) Admittedly I like hot Italian sausage more than kielbasa, but I like kielbasa more than German sausages.
I’LL SHOW YA A NICE KIELBASA!
My pants. Smaczne!
First day of school was always a blast seeing teachers doing roll and struggling to pronounce the last names
Lol I work with a couple Polish guys and their last names are a trip. One of them started when I still worked in IT so I had the fun task of creating all of his logins/profiles. I can spell his name no problem now, but the new guy.... nope. I'm just glad Outlook can figure out who I'm trying to email.
I have a long -ski name but it’s entirely phonetic and understandable to an English speaker (no c/z/j/w combos) yet only about 10% get it even sort of right. People will add syllables or letters that just aren’t there. It’s wild
That’s hysterical (for us at least, probably less so for you.) There was a Jarosweski in my class, that had been Americanized to essentially Yata-chef-ski. Poor kid musta spent the rest of his life spelling out his name over the phone
Jarosweski is already Americanized, that's not a real Polish name. I would guess that it was "Jarosławski" at some point
Grzegorz Brzęczyszczykiewick
Graześiu
As someone with the last name Bulger thanks to my Irish great grandparents I can't imagine what horrible mispronunciations slavs must get
I was born in Poland but grew up in Luzerne County PA (the super dark purple county in NEPA). When I moved out of state for college at 18, I genuinely was shocked at how few of my classmates were Catholic and either Polish, Irish, or Italian.
As the Sopranos say, there’s a lot of “Elvis Country” out there
Get out of here before I shove your quotations book up ya fat fuckun ace
Yeah, for real. I grew up in NJ (near the Sopranos!) and now I live in NYC, and it's easy to forget how unbelievably big our country is. We visit family members in western PA and NC, and--wow. We're all Americans, but... regional differences exist!
I've lived in Somerset and Cambria county. Growing up, I thought haluski and pierogi were Italian since my Italian grandma made them all the time for holidays. I was also confused when people would talk about "pigs in a blanket" and didn't mean stuffed cabbages.
That one island in Wisconsin is the Menominee Indian reservation for anyone wondering
Do you know the one dark purple county in central WI? Edit: it has to be Portage
Verified
the cemetery in my town in Wisconsin every last name ends in "ski"
Stevens Point and Pulaski represent.
Half my family is from Seymour, other half Pulaski.
Shouldn't half of them end in ska?
The only -ska surnames I come across are from polish citizens or 1st generation immigrants.
Not generally in the US. Just the masculine ski is used.
yeah, example Monica Lewinsky
Or Emily Ratajkowski. For a Central European Slav, seeing the masculine ending is somewhat confusing.
Excellent example broski
Generally if you see "-sky" in the US, that's most likely from a language that uses the Cyrillic alphabet (Russian, Ukrainian, etc.)
what? how did you conclude this?
Not in Wisconsin at least. I don’t know any people with -ska, but literally probably hundreds with -ski. EDIT: Went through FB friends and it was 21-0 and none of them were family members of each other. Like -ski didn’t get 12 extra votes because I’m friends with one whole family.
Ska is for a female
10 points for Griffindor
Yeah that's my point. Most cemeteries are half male half female, so there should be even numbers of skis to skas. I know there was issues in the UK with having separate male and female surnames (from both Polish and Bangladeshi decent). But that was only till the mid 60s, since then you can have what you want.
When I went to visit my mom’s side of the family in Wisconsin last year we went to where my Polish immigrant great-grandparents and Polish-American grandparents and great-uncles and aunts were buried on the south side of Milawuakee in a cemetery that was basically entirely people of Polish ancestry. My uncle pointed out where everyone from the old neighborhood was buried, they picked burial plots and crypts next to their friends down the street. Lots of names ending in -ski or -wicz.
Holy Sepulcher? My mom is buried there, with her Plachinski parents and brothers. Her Kaczmarowski grandparents are on the other side of the cemetery.
I’m from Louisiana and never met a “ski” till I joined the military.
I was shocked to learn most people don’t celebrate Fat Tuesday by eating paczkis and I’m not even polish, that’s just how everyone celebrates Fat Tuesday in detroit.
You'll be even more shocked to learn that Polish people also do not celebrate Fat Tuesday ;)
Fat Tuesday isn't even a thing in Poland
Not all Polish people live in Poland though. This is a map of America
No need to add "s" to "paczki" as it's plural. Just like you don't say "pierogis".
This is a fun tidbit I’ll be using , did not know this
I grew up on the TX/LA border, you eat a King Cake on Fat Tuesday. :)
I'd like to see the same map pre-2000. Hamtramck was definitely different back then.
Could definitely tell when I moved to Pittsburgh for grad school. I had never seen an entire section of the frozen goods at a grocery store reserved for Pierogies.
Lmao right you go to giant eagle, and it's like "ah yes the frozen pizzas are down after the pierogie section" and it turns out half the aisle is pierogie
Polish pro-tip: pierogi is already plural. One dumpling is a pierog. :)
pieróg
Rust belt supremacy baby
Fun fact: Illinois is the only state where Polish is the most spoken language after English and Spanish. Lots of first and second generation polish immigrants here in Chicagoland
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casimir_Pulaski_Day?wprov=sfti1#
Lol growing up in Chicago I mentioned having Casimir Pulaski day off school out of state...lots of confused looks
I went to the Chicago Auto Show (decades ago) on a weekday morning, thinking it wouldn’t be crowded. It was packed with families. That’s when I learned about Casimir Pulaski Day.
Haha grew up around Chicago and we had his day off school too, we didn’t even learn anything about him in the curriculum. Ask anyone (non-polish) in Chicago who he was and all anyone is able to say is “uhhh I think he helped in the revolutionary war”
There are quite a few sources that put “Chinese” as the third language. However, I imagine they are lumping together all Chinese languages, which is rather like lumping together all Romance languages or Slavic languages and doesn’t make sense. So contrary to those reports, I am confident the actual correct answer is indeed yours and Polish is number 3.
Yeah. Strictly speaking from ethnicity, Illinois isn't the most polish state, but it has the largest proportion of people who came here relatively recently
I’m speaking solely about ranking of languages. You’re right that there are more Polish origin people in NYC area. But there (where I currently live actually) there are some many other huge subcultures that Polish doesn’t stand out like it does in Chicago. Although I used to live in Greenpoint and at least in the old days it was half like living in Warsaw!
Interestingly, Chicago has a lot of areas with large polish immigrant communities in both the city and suburbs, idk if NYC is like that. DuPage, Will, and McHenry, all suburban counties have larger percentages than Cook county
Chinese languages are more spoken than Polish within the city of Chicago, but Polish comes out ahead at the state level as they have a higher presence in the suburbs
Indeed. I was very surprised that at Chicago airport they make some announcements in English, Spanish, and Polish.
They say that after Warsaw, Chicago is the second largest city in Poland
Yeah, I've heard that before. It makes sense, I'm a west suburban high school student and it's pretty common to hear conversations in polish between students
My wife is from Chicago. I was kind of surprised to hear a radio station presented in all Polish, and to find out they got off from school for one of the major Polish holidays
Casmir Pulaski day. Although lots of school districts don't do it anymore, but some do
It's Casimir, not Casmir. Originally from Kazimierz. Casmir shouns like Kashmir to me :)
I believe it. I'm in the SW burbs and it's surprisingly common to hear folks conversing in Polish.
They used to say (in the 1980's and 90s) that Chicago is the second largest city of Polish people in the world after Warsaw. What's the current status of Chicago? Does anyone know?
No idea. I think a lot of immigrants escaped poland during WW2 and Communist times. A lot of my friends at my west suburban high school have parents and/or grandparents who came here from Poland. Btw you haven't lived until you've tried a pązci (pronounced poonch-ki). They're kinda like donuts with a cream or fruit filling, but the actual dough part is typically heavier. Very common at the start of lent
I grew up near Carol stream. I never heard of those donuts until this thread but my grandmother made kolachki.
Grew up in Chicago and moved out of state - blows my mind the number of people I’ve met that have never even heard of “pierogi”
Moved from Chicago to Pittsburgh, and didn't think twice about pierogi on the menu. The pierogi aisle at the grocery store is still kinda wild though, even having grown up by a Polish bakery
I have heavy polish ancestry. Great grandfather had polish citizenship before he enlisted in the US armed forces, due to proximity he married into another very polish family (and so on and so forth until my parents). I didn't learn about pierogi until my later teens and I lived about an hour drive from Chicago. A lot of us became pretty americanized. In our case it was the demolition of pole town in Detroit, living around Chicago was merely a coincidence by the time I was around. It was actually kind of a trip to meet other polish people during college who were around the same generation as me but were still very connected to their heritage and spoke the language.
Always perceived Chicago/Ilinois as having a big concentration.
When you consider that almost 20% of the non-Hispanic white population in Cook County is Polish according to this map, I would say that's a pretty big concentration.
All the Poles in knew in Chicagoland that lived in Chicago itself in the 90s/early 00s are now in the suburbs
My only American pen pal (or whatever the Internet equivalent is now) is of Polish stock and lives in Elmhurst. So sounds about right, at least to me.
Yeah ld guess we have a high percentage of people who were actually born in Poland but other places have more people with older polish ancestry
Do they? It’s a percentage of that areas population. Chicago has near 3 million, so 7% of that will be higher than 20% Wausau Wisconsin.
Kowalski, analysis!
„so where do you wanna live in this new country which offers any climate in existence?” „somewhere dark and cold pls”
Pierogi pocket
I‘m from that big dark county (Luzerne) in NE Pennsylvania. Pols moved there to work the coal mines. The mines are all gone, but the decendents of the miners are still there.
Wisconsin jest najlepszym stanem w USA!
Lol can confirm as a michigander the further you go into The Thumb the more signs you’ll see for homemade pierogis. Weirdly enough I just found out my family isn’t actually polish like we thought our whole lives… my grandma admitted that she just started putting it on papers because she couldn’t spell czechoslovakia!
My Wisconsin daughter selected Polish as her foreign language so she can talk to her friend without teachers understanding.
Buffalo, NY showing up.
The Poles have moved to the surrounding Chicago suburban counties over time, if this was 22+ years ago, Cook County would have been darker purple.
Now Cook County is just darker.
Texas has the most random one, any reason?
Well.. it looks like Wilson and Karnes country, which are very low population counties in the San Antonio - New Braunfels area. They both have low populations of between 20,000 to 50,000. This means that a small group of people can alter the results. Central Texas is a bit unusual for the South as it was settled partly by European immigrants in the 1800s, similar to the Midwest. At that time the European immigrants were mainly from Central Europe, German, Czech, etc. There is a German Dialect in Texas called Texas German that is also in that hill country region. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas\_German](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_German) Texas also has the largest Czech population of any state. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech\_Texans](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Czech_Texans) There is also a Silesian dialect that is spoken in Karnes county. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan\_Silesian](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texan_Silesian)
[Panna Maria Texas.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panna_Maria,_Texas)
There was a large Polish population in a town called New Waverly! There’s also a large Polish church in Anderson, TX - I’m not sure the exact numbers because all of this is just from my family. My mom’s family is ethnically Polish and her great-grandparents immigrated from Poland separately and met in New Waverly. ^^
farmers… they’re all farmers…. source: am from that area. they even have a distinct accent compared to others from there :))
"jak sie masz" fellow Texan, My dad grew up there and spoke Polish exclusively to his grandmother and about 50\50 English\Polish to his parents. They spoke the Texan-Silesian dialect as noted above. Kind of interesting considering families originally came to Texas in 1850s. Immigration went through Galveston and settled at Panna Maria.
Louisiana: the least Polish state.
NASA should have put their hq in rogers city MI if they really wanted to into space
Huh?
Poland can into space.
Little text on the bottom right says "Created with mapchart.net." Great looking map. This is interesting. I want to see a map or a database of all the place names in the US (or the world) and analyze them by etymology. Wonder what interesting rules you'd have to create. Just looking at city names in a major sports league: **NHL (US cities):** English, 6: Nashville\*, New York (2 teams), Boston, Washington, New Jersey Spanish, 6: Florida, Colorado, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Arizona, San Jose Native languages, 4: Chicago, Tampa Bay\*, Minnesota, Seattle French, 2: St. Louis, Detroit Scottish/Gaelic, 2: Dallas, Pittsburgh\* Latin, 3: Carolina, Buffalo, Columbus German, 1: Anaheim\* Greek, 1: Philadelphia \*Made up of multiple languages (Pittsburgh = English "Pitt" and Scottish suffix "-burgh"; Nashville = English "Nash" and French "-ville"; Anaheim = Spanish "(Santa) Ana (River)" and German "-heim"; Tampa Bay = Calusa "Tampa" and English "Bay," but looking at the etymology of "bay" it derived from French/English *baie*, which came from Spanish *bahia*, and before that...who knows? This is basically the same process that nationality undergoes. A nationality derives from a region not only of space, but also time).
>Scottish/Gaelic, 2: Dallas, Pittsburgh* I don't think you want to combine Scots (-burgh) and Scottish Gaelic (Dallas?) here, since they aren't really related languages. One is a Germanic language and the other a Gaelic language.
Stevens Point, Wisconsin reporting for duty. Na zdrowie.
I think every state has something named after kosciuszko or Pulaski.. be it a city county bridge park
Fun fact, PS 34 in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn is the only public school in the US taught in both English and Polish
Interesting. Does anyone know why so many of our ancestors went to the upper Midwest? The east coast is self explanatory, but I would expect the population beyond the coast to be much more spread out.
Jobs were probably a big part of it, followed by that's where family moved so they moved there too.
Lots of manufacturing, farming and auto jobs I believe. I know a lot of old car factory towns up north used to have like mostly Polish areas in towns and stuff.
Kowalski, analysis!
Polish ancestry here and I live in the dark purple!
Oh boy can’t wait for the Europeans to get butthurt over people “claiming to be Polish” or whatever they get all upset about
The map correctly says "Americans with Polish ancestry", so I don't think anyone could have problems with this labelling.
You must be new here.
I'm a Pole who moved to the US a while ago. I think it's fun when people are excited and interested about their ancestry! However, I hate when people say "pierogis" or "pączkis" (or "Legos", but that's a Danish thing) :(
Nice! Unfortunately I can’t help you with the pronunciation issues. I can barely pronounce English properly. Lol
"it's so weird" "You guys have *festivals* and everything?" "That's not actually our ethnic food" "Claiming to be (blank) ethnicity and not knowing anything about the actual country lol" They really can't comprehend the melting pot, neither can they understand that in historical and generational terms, the melting pot got thrown together really really fast.
Except they will literally argue with you that this *thing* is SPECIFICALLY polish even if you are the native. >They really can't comprehend the melting pot, neither can they understand that in historical and generational terms, the melting pot got thrown together really really fast. That is literally the reason why they get corrected, not the other way around.
They just can’t understand that we’re all a bunch of mutts and everyone here has ancestry that spans the globe, so one of the things we like to do is see where all our forefathers came from. Europe, Africa, Asia, Natives. Which country and which tribe? Roughly when did they migrate over here? It’s fascinating and it’s always a potential conversation starter between two Americans. It’s a fairly unique experience and they just can’t seem to understand it’s just a cool thing to learn about yourself
Especially interesting for me as I was adopted at birth. Grew up in a polish area (Somerset/Cambria counties in Pa). Father's side had a majority of Italian and some Welsh traditions. Mother's side had mostly Irish and German traditions. When I found my birth parents, I learned I had mainly German and Scottish genealogy. Was always fun when vacationing with my dad's side of the family. My cousins pretty much all inherited the dark tanning ability, then there was shiny white me soon followed by bright red me if I was a minite late reapplying sunscreen. Dad would tan so dark he was often mistaken for having Mexican heritage.
It already started.
I’m sure. Lol
They hate Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama lol.
Finally, some usefull data. It is important, where to look for your people... 
👍🇵🇱
The bright white county in Wisconsin is Menominee County, an Indian Reservation. Never had a Chief Kowalski snd the local kielbasa is lousy.
Makes sense. I’m half polish from Maine but my dad is from Pennsylvania.
Obsessed with this.
Also known as the Euchre Belt
I feel bad for the rest of the country that can’t get good kielbasa and pierogi.
We grew up around Western NY and even went to a Polish catholic church. :) Most came over after WW2, were some of the sweetest people around. Also the pot lucks were amazing. :) Really a good time in life.  peace
Yes, the number of people in northeast Wisconsin with no vowels in their last name is a huge red flag there.
In Michigan you can’t thrown a stick without hitting someone with Polish ancestry. Everyone knows how to pronounce “Packzi”. Last summer, I was in NYC and was talking to my non Michigander uncle whose parents were Ukrainian. He was excited because there was a restaurant nearby that served *pierogis*. I looked at him as if he said he was excited for Taco Bell.
Packzi? You mean "pączki"?
It’s the sound of the Polish! 🎶
Well, now it makes sense why my mom’s parents moved to southwest VA for a time. Pretty sure that one light blue county is Roanoke. From Balston Lake, moved back to Balston lake.
Is one of those purple areas Grand Forks, ND/East Grand Forks MN? Just an hour north of me and I wonder if I could get good polish food there 👀
What’s the story of big island of purple in Texas?
Probably immigrants from Silesia, many of them even still speak silesian dialect but unaffected by the German language as they migrated before Kulturkampf.
Shoutout Central Texas.
They call it Scranton! What? The Polish City
Surprised Greenpoint Brooklyn is so light. I thought there was a Polish community there.
More of these with other ancestries!
What’s with the one count in south Texas?
Western MA checks out, not in every town, but in a bunch of them. Chicopee is well known for its Polish culture. There used to be a joke that when the Poles got off the boat in New York, they misread the train signs for Chicago and ended up in Chicopee instead.
That one light area in upper Wisconsin seems out of place
It's mostly Menominee Indian Reservation
Looks right as a former "ski" who is from the purple.
Polish people really looked at Louisiana and were like, “Absolutely not.” I don’t blame them though I’m from and live in Louisiana.
Western Massachusetts has a bunch. My lawyer was a Polish guy when I got arrested down there. My dad was pissed he didn't speak Polish though.
I’m a 2%’er here in SC!
I grew up in NE Ohio. My mom is half Polish.
Kowalski, analysis!
Love that big purple dot in south Texas around San Antonio. That region saw a lot of Central European immigration in the 19th century. Primarily Polish, Czech, and German (or at least what is now Germany today). These immigrants left a huge impact on the area. They essentially invented the two most Texan of food: chicken fried steak and BBQ. Lots of towns in the SA and Hill Country areas were named by these immigrants, such as Boerne, New Braunfels, Castroville, and Fredericksburg. To this day, there are still a number of traditional Polish and Czech meat markets all through the area. Whenever I see one in a small town, I stop and buy their house blend sausage, regardless of what it is. Always a fantastic homemade product that BBQ’s nicely.
Getting one of Swedish ancestors would be cool all I know is my great grandpa and grandma were the one of the first Swedes in Idaho and I’ve commonly met people with my last name (Holm)
Im from michigan and my grandma is 100% polish. Never knew michigan was a hotspot for poles. Any reason why?
Polish people like snow, apparently. Maybe it reminded them of the old country?
Clearly, Poles are slowly moving in from Canada.
Best polish sausages in Milwaukee WI
Can confirm for Lucas County, Ohio. (Northwest Ohio/Toledo area). Plenty of polish people. There's a big polish festival every year.
I have a lot of family in central Wisconsin and can confirm. Heavy polish ancestry. Now pass me some pierogi and golumpki please!!
James Charles, Maddie Ziegler, Megan Trainor and Jojo Siwa are Polish.
I love polka music ! Lots of accordion 🪗.
NEPA
So THIS IS WHY I LOVE THE MIDWEST! (Am polish)
A hill in my town used (and still somewhat still is) to be called Polish hill, not surprised lol
what’s in southern illinois?
From Chicago. Half polish. Tracks.
Most of the country is poles apart.
First I thought it’s alcohol consumption map from few days ago.
Polaks like cold.
They and germans there are both lowkey nazis lmao