Signature Jamaican Żurek: When a Soup Carries a Name

At Criss Studio, some dishes begin with ingredients. Others begin with a memory, a place, or a name. Our Signature Jamaican Żurek begins with all three.

Żurek is one of Poland’s most iconic soups — sour, comforting, deeply familiar, and often connected to Easter tables, family kitchens, and childhood memories. But for us, the word carries another layer: Żurek is also Mateusz’s last name.

So when a dish called Żurek appears on our menu, it is never just a soup. It is a signature, almost literally. For our Spring Tasting Menu, we wanted to take this very Polish idea and let it meet the other half of Criss Studio’s language: Jamaica. Not as a fusion gimmick, but as a personal conversation between two culinary memories.

The soul of the dish stays Polish. The base is built on fermented wholegrain rye, garlic, spices, and marjoram — the elements that give Żurek its unmistakable depth and sourness. But then the route changes.

Instead of cream, we bring in coconut milk.Instead of black pepper, Scotch Bonnet.Instead of staying only in Poland, the broth opens toward allspice, smoke, heat, and the warmth of Jamaican flavour.

The result is still Żurek — but spoken in our accent. We serve it as a clear, strained broth, with the elements arranged separately around it. There is a quail egg, dyed with butterfly pea flower, resting on a small potato pancake with fresh horseradish. There is Jamaican coco-bread, made with coconut milk and coconut oil, dipped in smoked butter — a small echo of the richness and smoke traditionally connected to the soup.

It is Polish.

It is Jamaican.

It is personal.

More than anything, it is the story that we place on your table as we open the Spring Tasting Menu: a dish about surname, heritage, fermentation, smoke, heat, and the way two people’s cultures can meet inside one bowl.

Signature Jamaican Żurek is part of our Spring Tasting Menu at Criss Studio, Hamburg.

Reservations are available Thursday to Saturday evenings.