A chef is honoring her Polish heritage with a new pop-up at local cocktail bar Diamond Lil (179 Nassau Ave.).
Yola’s pop-up is called Sierpień, which translates to August, and is inspired by childhood summers in Poland. The pop-up will take place at Diamond Lil on Mondays and Tuesdays when the bar is open from 4 p.m. until midnight through August 29.
The menu is limited, but authentic, with only one item called a Deska. “The one dish on the menu represents the summers I spent in Poland as a kid,” Yola told Greenpointers.
The Deska is presented as a charcuterie board. Yola describes it as a sampler platter inspired by backyard summer gatherings in Poland. It’s filled with a variety of fruits, salads, pickles, pierogi, and more for “messy enjoyment.”
Examples of items on the board include marinated peppers, a Polish cucumber salad called “mizeria,” roasted almonds, poached nectarines with vanilla raisins, sheep’s cheese, cherries with mustard and horseradish, and pickled garlic scapes. Yola’s platters also include vegan pierogi in flavors like red lentil with smoked tomato and kohlrabi with mushroom.
Diamond Lil is probably the perfect spot for a summer-inspired pop-up as the bar already showcases summery sips like the Frozen Painkiller. Yola told Greenpointers that Diamond Lil is extending their oyster service to accompany the one menu item of Sierpień.
If you can’t make it into the bar on a Monday or Tuesday, you can still try Yola’s food. You can find Yola selling pierogi on a skewer at Transmitter Park on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday evenings through the end of the summer. The skewered set comes with three pierogi and are topped with one of Yola’s homemade małosolne pickles.
Yola is the daughter of Polish immigrants and calls Poland her “second home.” She said, “Through cooking I want to explore the Slavic diaspora, both within and beyond our American associations of the Eastern Bloc, through a first-generation lens. DIY culture, nature, Southern influences, and Slavic folklore inspire my work.”
The chef also told Greenpointers that she’s glad she moved to the neighborhood. “I moved to New York this summer, and I’m loving Greenpoint; I feel like it’s an excellent place to explore and share the nuances of Polish-American identity.”
Polish? It’s just pierogi’s shape.
Nothing else.