Poland now has ten Michelin-starred restaurants. Four of them are in this city. Here’s why that matters — and what it means to sit down at each one
Poland now has ten Michelin-starred restaurants. Four of them are in this city. Here’s why that matters — and what it means to sit down at each one
Let’s be honest with ourselves for a moment. Not so long ago, telling someone you were flying to Warsaw for the food would have earned you a look, the kind reserved for people who announce they’re going to Cleveland for the jazz. Warsaw was a city of history, of rebuilt facades, of vodka poured without apology into small glasses. You ate because you were hungry. You ate because Poland had things worth eating. But you didn’t make a reservation two months in advance and take notes.
That has changed. On May 27, 2026, at an awards ceremony in Kraków, the Michelin Guide announced its first-ever countrywide selection for Poland, 196 restaurants, ten starred establishments, nineteen new Bib Gourmands. Warsaw alone now holds four Michelin stars. Four. The city that was bombed to rubble, rebuilt from memory and iron will, now has a dining scene that inspectors from the world’s most influential culinary guide are flying in to evaluate. Let that sink in.
This isn’t a feel-good story about scrappy upstarts. It’s a story about serious people who trained under serious chefs in London and Paris and came back home. About an Italian from Puglia who built a laboratory under his restaurant to study flavor chemistry. About a Japanese chef creating the best Edomae sushi in Poland. About a cook in Praga, across the river, where the guidebooks used to stop — serving Polish crayfish in ways that make the inspectors take out their notebooks. Warsaw is doing something real. Here’s where to find it.
Here is something nobody was saying five years ago: the best Edomae sushi in Poland — the first Japanese restaurant in the country to earn a Michelin star — is in a minimalist room on the outskirts of Warsaw, behind a twelve-seat counter, where Chef Alon Than and his team will spend the next few hours demonstrating exactly how much patience, technique, and understanding of seafood is required to make something that looks this simple.
Twenty to thirty pieces. Hokkaido scallops. Icelandic sea urchin. Spanish tuna. Langoustine nigiri with lime that the inspectors couldn’t stop writing about. This is Edomae done with the kind of precision that makes you forget where you are.
Edomae sushi is Tokyo’s original style — fish cured, marinated, or lightly treated before it reaches the rice, technique that predates refrigeration and demands total command of timing and seasoning. Than’s team sources globally: scallops from Hokkaido, sea urchin from Iceland, tuna from Spain. The rice is right. The knife work is the kind of thing you watch and wonder how many years it took to make look that easy.
The room is minimalist because it has to be. When the food is this good, anything decorative is a distraction. Twelve seats. Counter only. You watch every piece being made. Warsaw in 2026, ladies and gentlemen.
Jana Pawła Woronicza 33C/lok.U4 (Mokotów), alonomakase.eu
Praga is the part of Warsaw that survived the Second World War relatively intact — which means it’s older, more worn, more real, and for decades largely overlooked by people writing about fine dining. Witek Iwański changed the equation. His restaurant, hub.praga, earned its Michelin star in 2025, and it was immediately clear this wasn’t a story about a scrappy bistro punching above its weight. Iwański was named Chef of the Year by Gault&Millau back in 2018. He’s been ready for this.
Polish Crayfish Royale. Butter ice cream with salted caramel. Homemade bread that Michelin inspectors felt compelled to mention specifically. That’s the kind of attention to fundamentals that separates serious cooks from everyone else.
The cooking is contemporary Polish — grounded in local produce and tradition, but not nostalgic. You can eat à la carte or work through the tasting menu. The crayfish dish has become something of a calling card, the kind of plate that makes you stop talking mid-bite and just sit with it for a moment. Iwański has an instinct for Polish ingredients that feels both proud and unsentimental.
The fact that one of Warsaw’s Michelin-starred restaurants is in Praga says something about how this city is evolving. The Vistula isn’t a border anymore. It’s a river you cross to eat well.
Jagiellońska 22 (Praga), hub-praga.pl
Andrea Camastra came from Puglia, has a chemistry degree from Oxford, spent years building a reputation at Senses before COVID swept it off the table, and came back in 2022 with something more personal, more precise, and more strange in the best possible way. Just thirteen months after NUTA opened, Michelin gave it a star. It has held it every year since.
The menu is tasting only. Go for the Maestro menu if you’re serious. The cooking circles around Polish ingredients — seasonal, local, grounded — but runs them through an Italian sensibility and occasionally takes a hard left into something Asian and unexpected. The Funky, Jazzy, and Polish wine pairings aren’t just clever names; they actually describe the experience you’re buying into. The room has jazz murals on the walls and a soundtrack to match. The chef is in the kitchen, not on television.
Camastra has been named Chef of the Year and Chef of the Future by Gault&Millau, was listed in Le Chef’s top 100 in the world, and was recognized by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as among the most successful Italian professionals internationally in the last century. In Warsaw. Running a restaurant near a car dealership that’s easy to miss from the street. That’s the kind of story this city tells now.
Plac Trzech Krzyży 10/14 (City Center), nuta.com.pl
Bartosz Szymczak grew up in Gdynia, went to London to learn how to cook, worked under Tom Aikens — who, by Szymczak’s own account, showed him what perfection actually looks like — then moved to Lee Westcott’s kitchen as sous chef, ran a pop-up in Hong Kong with a former Noma alumnus, and eventually came back to Poland and planted himself on a quiet residential street beside Łazienki Park.
The bread arrives with butter flavored with Marmite. He picked that up in London and never let it go. Smart man.
Rozbrat 20 started as a breakfast spot in 2015. It evolved into a bistro. After a complete renovation in 2023, it narrowed its focus to a tasting menu and didn’t look up until the star arrived in 2024. The front room lets you watch the kitchen work. The dishes are technically intricate — consommé made from leftover bread, pigeon with beetroot and barley, bluefin tuna with kohlrabi — but nothing here is showy for its own sake. Szymczak draws from British and French technique, from Polish produce, from whatever makes the plate taste better.
This is a neighborhood restaurant that became a destination restaurant while staying a neighborhood restaurant. That’s harder than it sounds, and most places that try it fail. Rozbrat 20 did not fail.
ul. Rozbrat 20, (Powiśle) rozbrat20.com.pl
KRAKÓW
Bottiglieria 1881 — ★★ Two Stars · Poland’s finest restaurant for three consecutive years. Polish cuisine reinvented with boldness and originality.
WROCŁAW
BABA — ★ Chef Beata Śniechowska. Promoted from Bib Gourmand 2025 to Star 2026. Traditional Polish reinterpreted with assurance.
Most — ★ New 2026. Technical accomplishment and beautifully balanced dishes from Chef Ziemowit Owczarz.
GDAŃSK
Arco by Paco Pérez — ★ Spanish chef, Polish port city. One of the country’s most internationally credentialed kitchens.
POZNAŃ
Muga — ★ Consistent. Confident. One of the city’s most reliable fine dining addresses.
KOŚCIELISKO (TATRA REGION)
Giewont — ★ Named after the mountain that looms over it. Worth the drive south.
PSZCZYNA
Steampunk — ★ New 2026. Poland’s first starred restaurant outside its major cities. Chef Ziemowit Owczarz operates from the eighth floor of a former water tower.
The Michelin Guide Poland 2026 is the first to cover the entire country — 196 restaurants in total, with 92 new additions and 38 Bib Gourmand restaurants for those who want to eat brilliantly without the tasting menu price tag. Poland’s table has been set. It’s a good time to sit down.
