Off of Interstate 70, east of Interstate 25 in Globeville, the air on Sunday was filled with the smell of grilled kielbasa and cabbage outside St. Joseph’s Polish Church.

One moment, the speakers are blasting Poland’s electric and dancing music known as Disco Polo. The next, dancers in white blouses, black vests and colorful skirts embroidered with traditional flowers twirled and stomped their boots on the ground.

At one point, contestants lined up around a table to pick up Polish dumplings with only their mouths for a pierogi-eating competition.

Denver’s Polish community came together this weekend for the 12th annual Polish Food Festival.

The Polish Food Festival — founded in 2013 — featured a variety of folk music and dancing.

Swojskie Dziolchy, a group of folk singers based in Denver, “bringing joy and preserving Polish musical traditions,” according to their Facebook page, performed traditional songs. The festival also had Krakowiacy, a group of Polish folk dancers also based in Denver, which is open for dancers ages five and up.

“The folk dancing was really cool,” said Jake Krauss, a resident of Fort Collins who came down for the Polish Food Festival.
”It’s nice to see traditional cultural performances.”

Krauss also volunteered to compete in the pierogi-eating competition, saying it was difficult to attempt to eat it with no hands.

“I think the most successful ones were able to sort of just get it whole in their mouth, which I struggled to do,” Krauss joked.

The event featured a wide menu of staples from the Central European nation, including pierogi filled with meat, mushrooms, sauerkraut or cheese, sausages known as kielbasa, potato pancakes, stuffed cabbage rolls and hunter’s stew. It also had plenty of Polish desserts, including a traditional apple cake, as well as Polish beers.

“Most people live here for many years, but we still want to share our culture.
And Poland has always been a hospitable nation,” said Father Stanley Michalek, pastor of the parish.

The church was founded approximately 123 years ago to cater to the growing Slavic community in Globeville.

There are two other churches within blocks of each other in the neighborhood, in addition to St. Joseph’s, that were built for the Slovenian and Russian communities that established themselves in the Denver neighborhood near Globeville’s bustling smelter business, which attracted immigrants from all over Central and Eastern Europe.

St. Joseph’s is considered the oldest Polish national church in the western U.S. that is still in operation, according to historic records at the Denver Public Library. It’s older than the modern state of Poland, which was established after World War I.

“It was still cultivated in their hearts, in their culture, so that when they came here, even though they came from occupied Poland, they still had this big tradition,” Michalek said.

And what are his favorite traditions at the yearly festival?

“The singing and dancing here,” he said. “And the food is always good​​.”