WP Kuchnia pulls up a chair at Deep Roots, Vilnius’s two-month-old Michelin star

Poland’s food portal WP Kuchnia spent an evening at Deep Roots in Vilnius, a restaurant that won a Michelin star 60 days after opening. Its verdict: offal, in the right hands, is fine dining.

When Poles think of Lithuanian food, writes Ewa Malinowska for WP Kuchnia, cold beetroot soup and cepelinai usually come to mind. At Deep Roots, she found the tradition turned into something new. Chef Andrius Kubilius built the tasting menu as a tribute to his great-grandmother, Elena Starkienė, and her culinary notes, and the restaurant’s own organic farm supplies the meat, the herbs and even the water.

The star surprised even the chef, who had planned a quiet rest after opening. From her seat at the chef’s table, Malinowska was won over by a Lithuanian gazpacho with semi-dried strawberries, beef tartare served on a ceramic chessboard and dumplings of cherry dough filled with beef offal. Dinner ended with a mint ice-cream “rooster on a stick”, a figure from village fairs. Her answer to the fine-dining sceptic’s question was that you leave full.