Domku Bar & Cafe

Washington isn’t brimming with the cooking of Eastern Europe or Scandinavia, two reasons I relish this intimate hybrid restaurant in Petworth. Domku honors Hungary with a hearty chicken stew strewn with soft red peppers, Poland by butter-fried dumplings swollen with potatoes, bacon, onion and the white cheese called twarog. Adding to the fun — and helping cut the richness of some of these dishes — is Sweden’s fire water: aquavit infused with the likes of caraway, black currant and lemon-vanilla. Opened nine years ago by former Peace Corps volunteer Kera Carpenter, Domku translates as “little house” in Polish. Sure enough, the 45-seat dining room is a charmer created from slim benches, brick walls, a divider with flower cutouts and a fetching mobile composed of willow branches, birds and butterflies. Welcome, nature. New to Domku’s schedule is a meat-free menu on Tuesday nights that includes a relatively light salad of mayonnaise-bound, mustard-laced diced potatoes and carrots on frisee, a mash of eggplant and walnuts scooped up with crackery lavish, and Czech potato-cottage cheese pancakes transformed into a feast with a woodsy mushroom cream sauce. I’m partial to the not-so-Swedish “meatballs” made with lentils, mushrooms and Parmesan cheese, draped in an old-fashioned cream sauce and best eaten with a dab of lingonberry preserves. Throw in the occasional wine night featuring the foods and wines of Georgia or Hungary, and you’ve got even more to toast.