Kolachky.

Any suggestions on where to buy kolachky would be appreciated.I usually make it only in winter but have a taste for it.Thank you.

It's one of the specialties of the Oak Park Bakery. People are particulary partial to the cheese. Just one caution if you have an immediate urge-- they're closed for vacation until August 9th.

904 S Oak Park Ave
Oak Park
(708) 383-1712

Family members are partial to:

Vesecky's Bakery

6634 Cermak Rd (about 3 blks East of Oak Park Ave,)
Berwyn, IL 60402-2357
Phone: (708) 788-4144

Apricot, cheese, poppyseed, prune, cherry and sometimes pineapple.
These are the flat, round variety.
Be warned that Saturday mornings are a zoo; get there EARLY or be prepared to wait.

And -- I have not been here for a few years --

Tatra Inn Restaurant

6040 S Pulaski Rd
Chicago, Illinois 60629-4538
Neighborhood: Midway Airport
Tel: (773) 582-8313

...a buffet-style restaurant, they have homemade kolacky on the dessert table...small (the pastry square with opposite corners pinched up style), light, incredibly flaky, melt-in your-mouth addictive.

I called once to find out if they sold them & was told yes.

And to wax rhapsodic:
A now-defunct Bohemian restaurant in Berwyn used to haveMoravian-style kolacky (the yeast-dough ones) that were to die for. The dough was tender & buttery & I recall there was a layer of cheese filling topped with poppyseed filling which, in turn, was topped with toasted coconut.

Exquisite.

Thank you.Until a few months ago I never knew there was a yeast type kolachky.I just make them at Christmas time but had a taste for them.

That's funny. In Texas, there's a whole strip-mall industry centered on the donut-ish leavened ones, with a slightly different spelling, left over (like beer and polka in Texas & Mexico) from colonial days. They'd be surprised by our Polish cookies.

Jeff,

You are right about those strip mall kolachy stands, some offering donuts also, and many Korean operated. I used to love a couple of greasy sausage (cheap red type pork hot link) kolachys with my morning diet coke.

I just found some great kolachy. I was checking out Cermak for a possible chowist expedition and saw a lot of traffic (at 8:30 at night) at a panaderia I hadn't noticed before. I followed the crowd, and my nose, and ended up at El Paraiso Panaderia #3. I was cruising around with my tray and my tongs when I suddenly realized I was looking at a couple of trays of kolachy. I picked up a cheese so I could compare it with my recent sample from the Oak Park bakery, but they also had a couple other flavors.

It was terrific. A wonderful pastry. Heads and shoulders knees and toes above the Oak Park bakery. Real butter taste, a nice edge to the sweet cheese (lemon maybe), crumbly and good. I think it was 50 cents, but since my five items came to $1.47 with tax maybe it was only 30.

Oddly enough, nothing else I tried spoke to me. I did confirm that the fat piece of bread that looked like it had been spread with margarine and sprinkled with sugar was just that--and not good margarine either. But there's lots I didn't try and lots of of the happy customers were clearly regulars. They also sell their tres leches cake by the slice ($2.50).

I'd go back just for the kolachy.

El Parasio Panederia #3
5535 W. Cermak
Cicero, IL.

JeffB wrote:That's funny. In Texas, there's a whole strip-mall industry centered on the donut-ish leavened ones, with a slightly different spelling, left over (like beer and polka in Texas & Mexico) from colonial days. They'd be surprised by our Polish cookies.

Not something I'd ever seen or heard about before, but indeed...


Two of several strip mall "Kolache" places I saw in the Houston burbs:



Of the two places above, Kolache Factory was way better.


Kolache With Egg & Cheese from Kolache Factory (really tasty):

JeffB wrote:That's funny. In Texas, there's a whole strip-mall industry centered on the donut-ish leavened ones, with a slightly different spelling, left over (like beer and polka in Texas & Mexico) from colonial days. They'd be surprised by our Polish cookies.

Given that Texas has a history of Czech immigration, I'm not surprised to see a different permutation of kolache. "Kolache," "Kolach," "Kolace" or "Kolacky" (Koláče) is a Czech-Slovak-Slavic general word for pastry, so it has different connotations everywhere. I was surprised to see "kolacky" mean little jelly-filled cookies when I moved to Chicago from the east; in my family, kolach was a leavened bread, rolled out thin, then filled with nuts, prune or poppyseed and rolled jelly roll fashion before baking. Really delicious.

Try Vltava at 7416 W, Belmont, (773) 622-5490‎. It is a small Czech store that has a good variety of speciffically Czech items. They have great sausages that are made by a Czech butcher (you can special special order Czech vinna klobasa (wine sausages)). They sell rohliky (rolls) that are made according to the Czech recipe. They also carry a variety of Czech dry goods.

Try bakeries in Riverside or Berwyn. Get prune, apricot or cheese. They are traditional.