Restaurant Review: Paprika

It was a rainy Friday night, and we were looking for a restaurant called Paprika. The streets behind the Pražská Tržnice were dark and abandoned. No people, and certainly no restaurants, in sight. I was beginning to think we were lost…

Well, not really. We were in a car, warm and dry, and we had a GPS navigation system to guide us to Jateční 39. But even after we'd reached our destination, I still couldn't quite believe we were in the right spot. The place was tiny and had Budvar signs on the outside, and its windows looked grimy. This looked more like a neighborhood herna than a Hungarian restaurant.

"Do you still want to go?" one of my companions asked when we had parked. He looked more than a little apprehensive.

"Of course!" I replied. My friend stepped out of the car with an audible sigh.

I had been looking forward to this for a while. I like Hungarian food; like many Slovaks, I'd been raised on chicken paprikáš and lečo. So when I heard there was a new, family-owned Hungarian restaurant in town, I was eager to give it a try.

I'd called the restaurant a few months ago, also on a weekend night, to make a reservation. Paprika's website had said it was hosting a talented chef from the homeland who would cook up some fabulous Hungarian specialties. When I first dialed the reservation number, there was no answer. Then, a little while later, I called again. A sleepy-sounding man picked up the phone.

"Hello. I would like to make a reservation for the special event this weekend."

"No, no," the voice said. "Closed. Sorry. Closed for weekend." He hung up.

That conversation was a little discouraging. But now I'd succeeded in making reservations, and it turned out that every Friday night is a special night – not necessarily because of a mythical guest chef, but because that’s when the kitchen cooks a Hungarian dish not on the menu.

The interior of Paprika wasn't nearly as sketchy as our initial impression had promised. There was a small room in the front, paneled in light-colored wood with matching tables and chairs. The tablecloths were red and white checkered, and a cheerful row of red peppers had been painted around the room's perimeter. Hungarian folk music played from the speakers. There was another seating area in the back of the restaurant, but it appeared to be closed. The lighting was a bit bright and the air a little smoky, but it was still quite cozy.

Besides, our host was so friendly that the place immediately felt welcoming. The special dish that night, he told us, was a traditional lamb goulash. They don't cook off the menu on Fridays, but they had a couple of other dishes ready in the kitchen, too.

The regular menu has a couple of soups on offer (goulash soup and bean goulash soup), but that night, the only appetizer available was brains. I am generally not a fan of offal, partly because I am a bit squeamish and partly because organ meat is a little too fatty and rich for my taste. But even I had to admit that the pig brains on toast at Paprika (90 CZK) were good. Served over grilled brown bread and mixed with paprika, the brain spread had the texture of warm babaganoush; it was especially tasty when topped with a smear of spicy red pepper paste (our waiter's own, as he proudly informed us).

Since I'd taken a risk for the first course, I felt justified in ordering an old favorite of mine as my entrée. The chicken paprikáš (140 CZK) came with a tender piece each of chicken leg and breast in a thin paprika sauce and a healthy portion of halušky (small dumplings). A large dollop of thick sour cream was placed on top – I chose to dip into it as I ate rather than mix it in with the sauce. The dumplings were slightly bland, but had obviously been freshly made, and the sauce was perfumed with the mild sweetness of the paprika spice.

Looking across the table, it would be easy to think that my dinner companions had ordered the same dish as I had; the heavy Hungarian use of paprika makes a lot of their national dishes look quite similar. But one of them had ordered the lamb goulash (159 CZK), also served with halušky, and the other the segedínsky goulash (120 CZK), a thick stew of sauerkraut mixed with tender chunks of pork and served with bread.

The plates looked similar enough, apparently, that even the restaurant staff was confused. When it came time for our entrees, my friend sitting next to me and I were presented with the paprikáš we had both ordered. Only the meat didn't seem very chicken-like – it turned out to be the lamb goulash belonging to the table next to us. The waitress swooped in five minutes later and transferred the dishes to the other guests. Luckily, we hadn't dug in with our forks yet, because we didn't have any; it took another five minutes after we had been given the correct dishes to get a set of cutlery.

So things at Paprika can sometimes be a little disorganized. We had ordered some sides of čalamáda (pickled cabbage), but they never arrived. For dessert, I had two pancakes rolled up with apricot jam and walnuts and sprinkled with powdered sugar (90 CZK), which would have been great if the nuts weren't stale and bitter.

Still, I can definitely recommend Paprika. The dishes are cheap, the portions are large, and we definitely don't get enough Hungarian food around here. And even if you don't have a thing for paprika, you can always have pig brains.

Paprika
Jateční 39
Praha 7 – Holešovice
map
Tel.: 772 064 214

Open Mon-Fri 11:00-22:00, Sat 15:00-22:00. Closed Sunday.

photographs 1, 2, 4, 5 Tomáš Krist for Lidové noviny; all others paprika.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 21/11/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Prague Burgers: A (Small-Scale) Investigation

What makes a good burger a good burger? Well, for starters, the burger can't be a karbanátek.

I've seen some people in these parts frown on the notion of a hamburger being anything more than a quick food alternative to a real meal. But across the ocean in the hamburger's adopted home, putting together the all-American meat sandwich has turned into something of an art. Top-notch chefs like Daniel Boulud and Hubert Keller are opening burger restaurants, and some are even making them with luxury ingredients like foie gras and truffles.

I suspect it'll be some time before we see those kinds of ingredients on our burgers here, but there are a few places making a solid effort (and some not so solid) at dishing out the classic American meal. I went to six different local establishments that reportedly have good burgers, and ordered a bacon cheeseburger where available. Here are the results:





Bohemia Bagel Holešovice
Weekends are Burger Weekends at the Holešovice branch of Bohemia Bagel, when their usual selection of burgers is doubled; variations include the Falafel Burger, the Greek Burger, and the Steak Burger. But their classic version, the Bohemia Burger (135 CZK, plus an extra 20 CZK for bacon and American cheese), is probably their best: a juicy-flame-grilled patty on a toasted sesame bun slathered with garlic butter and served with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. The bacon was crispy and the cheddar cheese was plentiful – but alas, there were no pickles, and the fries were miserably limp and soggy.





Fraktal
Judging by the recommendations I'd gotten, I thought the Fraktal burger was supposed to be something really special. And it was special, but not in the way I'd hoped. This was one sad little patty (I chose the small 125g burger for 170 CZK; a 200g burger is also available for 195 CZK), black and shriveled on the outside and overdone and rubbery on the inside. The top layer of the sesame seed roll was crumbling, as if it had been defrosted after spending the last six months at the bottom of a freezer. Not recommended.






Hard Rock Café
I hate to give the Best Burger in Prague title to a big corporation, but this one was really good. The choice here is between ten different types of burgers in two different sizes: Legendary (285g of meat for 320 CZK) or Regular (starting at 220 CZK for 170g of meat). My HRC bacon cheeseburger had the telltale criss-cross marks of a flame-grilled patty, was perfectly medium-rare and came on a toasted brioche-style bun. The bacon was crispy, the meat was juicy, and there were potato peel fries on the side (not enough of them, though). The best part? The service at Hard Rock Café is simply stellar.





Jama
Jama's burger doesn't have pickles, but it does have tomatoes, red onions, lettuce, and… olives? To get a bacon cheeseburger here, you pay 175 CZK for a cheeseburger or a bacon burger, then add 40 CZK extra for bacon and 39 CZK extra for your choice of cheese (you can save a crown if you do the math). My beef patty was crumbly and thick, with nice grill marks, but it could have used a little more seasoning. The bun was American style (sweet and light with sesame seeds) and the bacon was Czech (fatty, with very little crispiness). Jama was the only restaurant I tried that had steak fries, but the service was excruciatingly slow. And I could have done without those olives.





Mozaika
Mozaika's is a cheese-less burger (199 CZK), topped instead with garlic mayo and sautéed onions and mushrooms. I liked the effort at ingenuity here – the string fries come with a homemade spicy tomato dip and the burger is served on spinach foccacia – but the execution was all wrong. This was a straight-up karbanátek, with the meat all mashed together into an unappetizing lump, and the focaccia was saltless and soggy. I remember this hamburger being a lot better once upon a time.





Potrefená Husa Dejvice
This Husa makes its 200g burgers (268 CZK) with beef tenderloin. That sounds good in theory, but tenderloin is really too lean a meat to make a juicy enough patty – and this one was under-salted, too. The toppings (American cheese, red onions, lettuce, tomato) were plentiful and fresh, and the shoestring fries were great, but they couldn’t make up for the white bacon and tasteless beef. It'll satisfy a craving, but you won't be dreaming about it.

photographs: 1 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others Prague Spoon

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 12/09/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: SaSaZu

If you don't understand what "fresh pomelo, spring onion, Chinese cabbage, ginger, lychee, Hanoi crab, krupuk chips and shiso leaf sauce" means, you're not welcome at SaSaZu.

That is the description of the Vietnamese summer salad as listed on SaSaZu's menu, which, in both print and online formats, exists only in English. Inevitably, this raises some questions: do the people running SaSaZu not realize that their restaurant is situated in the Czech Republic? Do they not want Czech people to come to their restaurant, or do they welcome only those Czech people who are cool enough to speak fluent English? Or could they just not find anyone to do the translation?

Even if your culinary English isn't up to form, you can rest assured that the menu doesn't make much sense even to native speakers. It's a complete mess, with 30 dishes categorized under five different general categories – Sambal, Otak-Otak, Flame, Roti, and Tai-Tai Grill – each of which has its own description ("Tai-tai is a famous Thai dish combining sticky rice, coconut, and pandan leaves") that only vaguely have anything to do with the dishes listed below them (Tai-tai is not available to be ordered).

To make matters more confusing still, it is impossible to tell either from the descriptions or prices which dishes are appetizers and which are main courses. From this you might infer that all of the dishes are fairly small and about equal in size, but that's not the case. And you'll be better off not asking your servers for advice; ours told us to order three dishes each, but since many of them were quite large, we ended up with more food than we could eat.

The bizarrely (dis-)organized SaSaZu restaurant is part of the recently-opened SaSaZu mega-club in Holešovice's Pražská Tržnice. It's a big, bustling, imposing place, reminiscent of Buddha-Bar and already overtaking that Asian-themed club/bar/restaurant in popularity. SaSaZu is really quite stunning, with delicate geometric lamps dangling from the soaring ceilings of an old industrial warehouse. The food is gorgeously presented and, for what it's worth, it's also full of beautiful people. Clearly, this place has ambitions to be on the grand scale of a large club-restaurant in London or New York. But there are just too many faulty elements here for SaSaZu to achieve that kind of status.

One person who obviously knows what he's doing is the chef, Shahaf Shabtay. His extensive international experience is evident in his eclectic mix of mostly Southeast Asian dishes. The Thai papaya salad (110 CZK), one of Shabtay's signatures, is a snappy combination of shredded green papaya, fresh herbs, roasted cashews, and green beans in a tangy lime dressing. I also loved the addictive Babi Ketjap (190 CZK), traditionally an Indonesian sweet soy pork dish, reinvented here with Japanese udon noodles and Chinese-style pickled vegetables.

The flavor profiles at SaSaZu are much more colorful than anything you'd find at Buddha-Bar, and the prices are a lot more palatable, too. The most expensive dish on the menu is the lobster vanilla mirin (485 CZK) – which, incidentally, was also one of the most disappointing. Although the lobster itself was generously portioned and perfectly cooked, its delicate flavor was overwhelmed by the fragrant vanilla and mirin (a Japanese rice wine) sauce, and it was served atop slices of brown, oily eggplant. And the SaSaZu fries (40 CZK) were limp and soggy. But there are still more than enough great dishes at SaSaZu to make a trip here worth your while.

If you can stand the terrible service, that is. During just one visit, my table witnessed more mix-ups and delays and problems than I've seen in my past few months of restaurant visits. My companion got two of his dishes at once, so by the time he finished one, the other was cold, and the rest of us didn't get our food until he was almost done eating. The waiters had no idea who was getting which dish, so each plate had to be described to us in detail before we could figure out where it was supposed to go. And because nobody cleared our table after the first course, the next dishes came when the dirty plates were still on the table.

We didn't have any luck with the beverages, either: SaSaZu has no drinks or cocktail menu, only a wine list. When a friend asked for some wine by the glass, the waitress offered her just one option, even though they had more available, then forgot to bring her second glass. And it was impossible to flag down a server to order more drinks when we ran out.

They were probably all busy serving the more important guests. Some tables seemed to be getting special treatment; we didn't get hot towels to wipe our hands before the meal, but other patrons did (we were offered the towels on my second visit to SaSaZu, when the service was generally better, but still problematic). Instead, we got treated to one of the managers yelling at a waitress just next to our table, and passive-aggressive behavior from another waitress who was apparently furious that we didn't agree to eat a dish we hadn't ordered.

Like so many pseudo-world class business ventures in this town, SaSaZu only manages to make it halfway. In any civilized city, a big club would offer free entry to the guests who've dropped several thousands of crowns on food and drinks at their restaurant. But at SaSaZu, the restaurant patrons have to pay the club's entry fee if they want to dance after dinner – not the smartest move, perhaps, for a club with a capacity of 2500 people that feels more or less empty even if it manages to lure in a thousand. Instead of sticking around and buying drinks at the club, we left.
Had we stayed, we could have come back to the restaurant up until 3 a.m., its daily closing time. But I wasn't going to risk another obnoxious service disaster, even for another serving of SaSaZu's famous papaya salad.

SaSaZu Kitchen & Bar
Bubenské nábřeží 306/13
Praha 7 – Holešovice
map
Tel.: 284 097 444

Open Mon-Sun 11:00-3:00

photographs 1, 2, 4, 5 Tomáš Krist for Lidové noviny; all others sasazu.com

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 01/08/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: 7 Tacos

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 09/05/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

The first thing wrong with 7 Tacos is that they don't know how to make a taco.

From a mountain of iceberg lettuce and grated cheese, I excavated three rolled-up, deep-fried small corn tortillas. This sort of dish is generally known as taquitos, or flautas when they are made with wheat flour tortillas. It is a variation on the taco, yes, but a taco it is not.

I might have been more forgiving if "taco" wasn't the title dish of the restaurant. And it took me a little while to figure out where the number "7" came from. Was it the amount of tacos served on each plate? The fact that the restaurant is in Holešovice? As it turns out, the 7 comes from the number of taco variations available: you can have them filled with either vegetables, chicken, pork, beef, shrimp, beans and bacon, or a dubious-sounding "caprese" mixture.

I went with the bean filling (105 CZK) – kidney beans in some sort of sauce with a little bit of bacon thrown in. Along with the aforementioned mass of lettuce, the taquitos came with refried beans and a scoop of dry rice. It wasn't terrible, which is more than you could say for the burritos.

Before the most offensive dish even arrived at the table, I was already having a bit of a guilty conscience. I'd convinced three friends to come out to far-off Holešovice (and one of them to drive me there) based solely on my promise that we were about to eat some really good Mexican food. I felt pretty confident about it because I'd read a positive review of 7 Tacos written by an apparent Californian – and if anyone knows Mexican food outside of Mexico, it's the people from Cali.

As it happened, one of my friends who came along is a Californian herself and something of a Mexican food connoisseur. She called me from the restaurant as I was on my way there. "Are you sure you want to eat here?" Uh-oh.

It seemed that the tortilla chips she had ordered were not only from the bag, but were covered in a Dorito-like spice mix. This, according to the Laws of Mexican Food, is illegal (not that you will find homemade tortilla chips anywhere in Prague, but these were of exceptionally bad quality). Unlawful, too, is the use of prepackaged guacamole (35 CZK for a small dish). Now, I don't know for sure that the guac had come from a jar, but the kitchen would have had to perform some serious alchemy to make fresh guacamole so perfectly smooth, green, and tasteless.

The pico de gallo (35 CZK), on the other hand, was fresh – at least relatively speaking. It consisted of chopped-up onions and tomatoes that were pretty much identical in color and equally lacking in flavor; either they were on the old side or they had been sitting around, chopped up and ready to be served, for a very long time. Other dipping delights included runny cheese from the can and, inexplicably, barbecue sauce (also 35 CZK each). The only authentic condiment in the whole place was the bottle of Cholula hot sauce that graced our table, good for combating the food's general blandness.

If it's done right, of course, Mexican food should be anything but bland. Try telling that to whoever puts together 7 Tacos's burritos. I didn't order one, but two of my companions did, one chicken and the other beef (155 and 185 CZK), and both declared them the worst burritos they'd ever had in their lives.

Why were the burritos so bad? The beef version was low on meat; there were just a few specks of ground beef in a tortilla filled mostly with a flavorless combination of cooked onions and bell peppers. There was a little bit of crunchy rice and a couple of beans. And then there was some pickled cactus – too much, apparently, because it made the whole burrito taste sour, like it had been dipped into the dregs of a pickle jar. I shouldn't have expected anything less of a Mexican restaurant that has řízek on its menu.

7 Tacos is located in the lobby of the Plaza Alta Hotel. To enter the restaurant, you walk through what feels like a cheap hotel bar, with its flatscreen TV, low tables, and tan leather armchairs. The dining area itself is decorated with the standard-issue Mexican restaurant gear: ponchos, tequila ads, a sombrero. There's a small children's playroom, which is nice until you consider that it is directly adjacent to the restaurant's smoking area. In case you were wondering, it is not worth coming to 7 Tacos for the atmosphere alone.

Yet again, a Prague Mexican restaurant had brought disappointment, even disgust, to me and my taco-craving friends. So the next night, we decided to correct our mistake. We went to Fosil – a restaurant that has already been discussed on this page at some length, so I won't go too far into my dinner there. But I will say that they have a new menu and the meal was very good. And although it isn't perfect, Fosil is definitely worth a try, if only to taste Mexican food made by real flesh-and-blood Mexicans (I have heard that the delivery service Las Adelitas, also run by Mexicans, is tasty, but I haven't been able to get a hold of them yet).

From now on, I only want to go to authentic Mexican places like Fosil. There are just way too many Czexican chefs in this town who think they can cook up great Mexican food using jarred salsa and some Vitana-brand tortillas. If I was in Mexico, I wouldn't trust some guy named Pepe to make me a good Czech meal from a can of guláš. And I'm not going to trust Jirka at 7 Tacos with my burrito, either.

7 Tacos
Ortenovo náměstí 22
Praha 7 - Holešovice
map
Tel: 220 407 011

Open daily 06:30-23:00

photographs: 1, 3, 4 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others 7tacos.cz

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