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{{data|3 April 2019}}
[[File:Restauracja Wierzynek.jpg|thumb|upright|The sign at the entrance to the [http://wierzynek.pl/nasza-legenda/ Wierzynek restaurant] at Rynek Główny 16 (no. 16, Grand Square) in Cracow]]
Among many tourist attractions in my beautiful hometown of Cracow (or Kraków, if you will), the former seat of the kings of Poland, there are two venerable establishments which pride themselves on dating back to the reign of King Casimir the Great – specifically, to the year 1364. One of them is Poland’s oldest institution of higher learning, the one where Copernicus went to college. Indeed, King Casimir obtained papal consent to open a university in Cracow in 1364. But it took him three more years to actually open the Academy of Cracow, and three years after that King Casimir died and the Academy closed for business. It was only in 1400 that King Vladislaus Jagailo and Queen Hedwig founded a new university in Cracow, which is known to this day as Jagiellonian University (and not Casimirian University). "``Founded in 1364" turns out to be somewhat of a stretch.
Okay, but what does it have to do with culinary history? Nothing. That’s why we’re now going to focus on the other establishment, one which even has the year 1364 written into its logo. Here’s what you can read about it in ''1,000 Places to See Before You Die'', a snobbish guidebook to the world’s most overpriced hotels, restaurants and other tourist traps:
The only historical source that mentions the banquet at Wierzynek’s are the ''Annals of the Glorious Kingdom of Poland'' by Jan Długosz, also known by his Latinized name, Joannes Longinus. According to his account, it all began when Charles of Luxembourg, Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire and King of Bohemia (a kingdom roughly corresponding to the modern-day Czech Republic) was receiving envoys from Hungary and said something very offensive about King Louis of Hungary’s mom. It led, obviously, to a major diplomatic crisis. Louis, together with Duke Rudolph Habsburg of Austria (who also had his differences with the emperor and, incidentally, his father-in-law), was getting ready for war. This is when Pope Urban V decided it was enough that western Europe, recently ravaged by a pandemic of bubonic plague, was already being plunged into a bloody conflict (which would later come to be known as the Hundred Years’ War). Having rulers of the relatively stable and quickly developing central Europe at each other’s throats would be too much. Which is why he dispatched his nuncio, Peter of Volterra, to try and calm them down. The nuncio did a great job – he managed to prevent hostilities and to convince the wrangling monarchs to settle their argument through arbitration. It was agreed there would be two adjudicators: one was Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, the last sovereign ruler in Silesia and uncle of the emperor’s recently deceased third wife. The other was King Casimir of Poland, brother of the Hungarian queen mother whose honour had been besmirched.
The nuncio also engaged in matchmaking and arranged the marriage of the freshly widowed emperor with Casimir’s granddaughter, Duchess Elizabeth of Stolp, Pomerania. The wedding was held in Cracow. According to Longinus, people invited by King Casimir included – apart from the young bride (and her family) and the not-so-young groom (and his family) – King Louis of Hungary, King Sigismund of Denmark, King Peter of Cyprus, Duke Bolko the Small of Schweidnitz, Duke Otto V of Bavaria, Duke Semovit of Masovia, Duke Vladislav II of Opole, etc. The wedding reception lasted twenty days, during which barrels of wine were put out in the streets for the common folk, while the royals and lords passed their time with tournaments, dances and banquets. The festivities were overseen – again, according to Longinus – by a certain Wierzynek, "``a councillor of Cracow, native of the Rhineland" and "``manager of the royal treasury". He held one of the banquets in his own home, where – in gratitude for "``unspeakable benevolence" – he seated King Casimir (and not the emperor!) in the place of honour and showered him with presents that were worth more than the new empress’s dowry.<ref name=Długosz>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Długosz
| imię = Jan
}}</ref>
It’s commonly accepted that Wirsing’s banquet took place during the third of the meetings mentioned above – the one of September 1364. This one took the top spot in the number-of-crowned-heads-in-one-place category, which surely stirred people’s imagination. But if sources confuse this summit with the imperial wedding of May 1363, then you can imagine just as well that Wirsing’s feast was part of the multi-day wedding festivities. Especially if you remember that Longinus compared the value of Wirsing’s gifts for Casimir to that of the bride’s dowry. Although, after all, if Wirsing had done such a good job as a wedding reception manager, than why couldn’t he repeat his own success during the political summit a year and a half later? Perhaps there was more than just one "``banquet at Wierzynek's"?
== Tourist-Gastronomic Establishment ==
[[File:Jan Matejko - Uczta u Wierzynka 1877.jpg|thumb|upright|left|This is how Jan Matejko, in 1877, imagined guests arriving at the banquet at Wierzynek's – on the opposite side of the Grand Square to where the restaurant bearing his name is now located.]]
What about Wierzynek? Well, the history of this establishment dates back all the way to… 1947. This is when Kazimierz Książek opened the restaurant in the Morsztyn House at no. 16, Grand Square (Rynek Główny 16). It’s said that it was from Dr. Jerzy Dobrzycki, head of the Cracow History Museum, that he got the idea to name the restaurant "``Pod Wierzynkiem" ("``At Wierzynek's").<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = Styl.pl
| nazwisko r = Leśnicki
}} }}
This must be one of the earliest descriptions of what is now considered an important part of traditional Polish hospitality, that is, forcing more food and drink down one’s guests’ throats than they are able to ingest. I can almost hear Wirsing and King Casimir urge their commensals with "``You should try this one too! Just a little piece. But you must! Aren't you gonna drink with me?"
Later descriptions of the banquet often stress the lavishness of golden and silver tableware, which is probably how some historians have interpreted the mentions of expensive gifts that were presented to the visiting monarchs. This may have been influenced by analogy to a chronicler’s account of another famous banquet from Poland’s medieval history – the one in Gniezno, AD 1000, where Duke Boleslav the Brave entertained Emperor Otto III and impressed him so much that Otto made Boleslav Poland’s first king.
}} }}
It’s possible that these gifts were not so much handed to the guests as allowed to be taken. During the congress of Cracow, these may have been parts of the interior design of royal sleeping chambers at the Wawel Castle, "``sumptuously decorated with purple and scarlet, gold, pearls and jewels",<ref name=Długosz/> as well as precious-metal plates, which the visitors simply helped themselves to after the party. It’s like you steal a towel from a hotel room and the hotel manager decides to make you a present of it; this just seems to have been the norm in the Middle Ages. It’s little surprise, then, that both the guests and the chroniclers paid much more attention to the tableware than to the food and drink that was served on it. Especially that, outside of special occasions, even at royal tables people normally ate from trenchers cut out of stale loaves of rye bread, which – soaked with rich, spicy sauces – were later consumed by the servants.<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Dembińska
| imię = Maria
De Machaut wrote there was no point asking for further details of the feast, as grandeur of such scale couldn’t be put into words anyway. Still, I’m going to try and imagine what kind of dishes may have been served on King Casimir’s and his visitors’ table. Unfortunately, no Polish recipës from the Middle Ages have survived to our time, but we do have Czech recipës, which are worth looking at. Why? Because, firstly, the most important guest was Emperor Charles, ruler of the Czech-speaking Bohemia who resided at the Hradčany Castle in Prague, so it makes sense that some Czech recipës could have been included in the menu to honour him. And, secondly, the Poles generally looked up to Czech civilization, which stood much higher than their own at the time.
Today the Poles are most keen to ape the Americans; earlier, "``what a Frenchman dreamed up, a Pole soon adopted"<ref>{{Cyt
| nazwisko = Mickiewicz
| imię = Adam
}}</ref>
Let’s a take a peek, then, into the oldest recipë collection in the beautiful Czech language. It’s ''Spis o krmiech kterak mají dělány býti'' (''How to Prepare Dishes''), known from a 15th-century manuscript, although some individual recipës included in it may be much older. It turns out that, even back then, Bohemian-Polish culinary exchange wasn’t entirely one-sided and that among about 160 recipës we can find in the cookbook there are five which are described as ''po polsku'', or "``in the Polish manner". One of them is for Polish-style mutton and the remaining four are variants of ''štika po polsku'', or pike in the Polish way. Pike was a highly prized fish in the Middle Ages, so on a lean day it wouldn’t have been out of place on the royal table. And how better to receive a Bohemian king in Poland than by treating him to a Polish-style Bohemian dish? So let’s see how it was made.
{{Cytat
[[File:{{#setmainimage:Abramowicz Uczta u Wierzynka 1876.jpg}}|thumb|upright=1.2|left|''Wierzynek's Banquet'' by Bronisław Abramowicz (1876)]]
If anyone decides to give this recipë a try, then please let me know whether it’s any good. As for me, I wouldn’t want to waste good fish. Because what was so Polish about this preparation? If you compare the recipës described as "``Polish style" with others in the same cookbook, you will notice that the difference was mostly in the method of thermal treatment. All of the supposedly Polish dishes were simply boiled, whereas in other recipës boiling was at most only the first step, which could be followed by roasting, baking, frying, stuffing, covering in aspic, etc.<ref>{{Cyt
| tytuł = W poszukiwaniu istoty języka
| nazwisko r = Jakobson