Writer and culinary veteran John J. Goddard plans to host a series of Eastern European–themed popup dinners in St. Louis, with a first stop in Poland.
On January 24, Goddard’s LUKA dinner series will kick off with “Zimowy Obiad: A Polish Winter Dinner.” The first seating, January 24 from 7–9 p.m. in the Seed Sprout Spoon space (3137 Morganford), recently sold out, but Goddard has added a second seating, on January 25, at the same time.
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A St. Louis native (and SLM dining writer), Goddard started hosting event dinners a decade ago while living in Portland, Oregon. He lost his job as a cook during the 2008 recession and started looking for other sources of income. Goddard, who lived for a while in Croatia and traveled around Eastern Europe, decided to capitalize on his passion for the region’s cuisine (he even wrote a book on it, “Dalmatian Cooking: Cuisine of the Slavic Mediterranean“). Small operations including a charcuterie and baked-good delivery led to his dinner series, LUKA, which means “port” or “harbor” in Serbo-Croatian.
“The locations change,” he says. “It’s wherever I can make it happen. In that sense, it’s like being in a pirate ship.”
Goddard found the location for his first local pop-up dinner when he realized that Seed Sprout Spoon offered a space for private events. “All winter I’ve been complaining to my friends that I miss the Polish buffets up in Chicago,” he says. “I talked with Seed Sprout Spoon, and it all came together very quickly.”
On January 24 and 25, guests will be greeted with chilled Polish rye vodka and a charcuterie board with pasztet (pâté) dry smoked bacon, and a base of Polish pickles and homemade pickled vegetables. A family-style dinner will then start with zupa grzybowa (a creamy herbed mushroom soup), followed by a main course of gulasz wieprzowy (pork goulash in paprika sauce), which will come with kasza (durum wheat groats). Other dishes include kopytka (potato dumpings) and bigos (a stew made from sour cabbage, kidney beans, and smoked Polish sausage). Dessert will be makowiec (a slightly sweet poppyseed cake). Guests can enjoy coffee and tea throughout the evening. A cash bar will be available for those who want additional beverages.
“Most, if not all of the previous Luka events were focused on regional Croatian and Balkan cuisine, since the research for my book had me eating, breathing and sleeping that food for a long time,” Goddard says. “The expansion to include other Slavic and Eastern European cuisine as fair game is something I’ve considered in recent years when thinking about re-launching the series in St. Louis.
“I know that I have to make menus very approachable in St. Louis,” he continues. “There is definitely a limit on adventure here. That’s not a judgment, just an important observation I need to keep in mind as I look to serving unique, new dishes. So the expansion into other national cuisines lets us have some adventure while staying within the boundaries of the common Midwestern appetite. I’m from St. Louis. I understand the limits.
“My plan is to move quickly because I want to cover a lot of territory and keep people interested,” he says. “It’s a vastly underexplored culinary idiom.”
Goddard plans to host a second pop-up series that will highlight Romanian food, though he hasn’t yet finalized the details. “Slavic and Eastern European food has an approachable hominess to it,” he says. “When people taste it, they say it’s awesome. I hope people get turned on to it because it’s great food, and it gives me an excuse to cook and eat it myself.”
Tickets for the dinner on January 25 are $35 excluding gratuity. Keep abreast of this and subsequent LUKA events on Facebook.
