Here's a riddle for you. It's lunchtime and you're hungry. Because you have a pretty distinguished palate, you don't want to eat just anything. It has to be decent. Up to international standards, even.
But there's a catch: you're in Bratislava. Besides hopping in the car and driving the 60 kilometers to Vienna, what can you possibly do?
You see, there isn't much going on in Slovakia's capital in terms of restaurants. They exist, but most of them are pretty pathetic, and not even very cheap. The situation is bad enough to make wishy-washy Prague look like a culinary Mecca. As a Czech businessman I once overheard 
on the Pendolino to Bratislava said (with admirable succinctness), "It's a hole. There's nothing there."
My parents would argue otherwise. They are Slovak and spend a lot of time in their homeland, testing out various second-rate eateries in the hope that they will find someplace worth revisiting. And after a while, they did find a place – three places, in fact.
It just so happens that all three of those restaurants are in the same building (the Erdödy Palác), owned by the same company, and presided over by a single chef. And it also happens that that chef is Czech. His name is Jaroslav Židek, and the restaurants are called Camouflage, Flowers, and Lancia Café.
I've been to all three establishments multiple times. Camouflage is the most expensive, with fancy French-inspired cuisine; I liked the food, but found it to be a little complicated for my taste – I vaguely recall a chocolate fondant that came with about ten different accessories. Flowers has upscale Italian food that is very tasty (try the saffron, shrimp, and asparagus risotto), but its best asset is its atmosphere: situated in an airy, glassed-over courtyard, its walls are plastered all the way up to the ceiling with original prints of Andy Warhol's "Flowers" series.
So why did I choose to write about Lancia Café, which is the least fancy of the three and a bit more of a bar and café than a real restaurant? I'm going to blame this one on my mom and dad, who are regulars there, and who swore up and down that I was going to absolutely love it. "Best restaurant in Bratislava," they insisted. "And there's nothing like it in Prague." Well, that was true at least. I can't think of a Prague restaurant that serves both crêpes and yaki soba noodles – a combination that I didn't necessarily find appealing, but I was going to try the place anyway.
When I visited, it was still warm enough to sit outside on Lancia Café's wood-plank terrace. The setup is great for checking out the hordes of people as they stroll up and down Bratislava's main pedestrian thoroughfare. The café is less appealing on the inside, where stark lighting, flat-screen TVs and black plastic chairs make the place feel vaguely futuristic and very cold.
The menu consists of a few Asian-inspired bar snacks and entrees, some soups and sandwiches, and the aforementioned crêpes and their savory buckwheat flour counterpart, the galette. My galette came with shrimp, hard-boiled eggs, leek, and crème fraiche (€8.80). It was also cold.
Maybe it was because I was sitting outside, but by the time it got to me, my galette was no longer fresh off the pan. It was the same story on a subsequent visit, when my companion ordered the spinach and mushroom galette (€8.13). It probably would have helped if the plates had been heated. Otherwise, the galettes were all right, but the dough was a little bland, as if it needed to be salted more. These were far inferior – and a lot more expensive – to the galettes at La Crêperie in Holešovice. So far, I was unimpressed.
I was happier with the tom yum gai soup (€3.82), which was both warm enough and had a sweet-spicy kick. Still, my mother claimed she'd had better versions of the soup there before, and after some thought, she admitted that the food was often inconsistent. Depending on who was cooking that night, it seemed, the dishes were always a little different.
If that is indeed the case, I hope the chicken with green curry (€12.12) is usually better. When I had it, it was incredibly greasy, with oil gathered in pools at the top, and tasted only of chili and nothing more. The chicken was tough and stringy, a surprise after the tender chicken sate appetizer (€7.47) I'd just had. Plus, we had to wait an absurdly long time for our main courses to arrive.
It's not all bad at Lancia Café. They have a fantastic salad comprised of papaya, celery root, green beans, and grilled shrimp in a spicy lime dressing (€10.79), and a simple but tasty chicken stir-fry (€13.11). And their desserts can be pretty great, too: the Thai classic sticky rice with mango, honey, and coconut milk (€5.48) and a range of homemade ice creams and sorbets (the chocolate sorbet is particularly wonderful). They also are the only restaurant in Slovakia to brew the top-quality "sustainable" coffee Tierra Lavazza, a blend harvested exclusively from three small communities in Colombia, Peru, and Honduras.
Was all this good enough to make me a believer? I will probably visit Lancia Café again the next time I'm in Bratislava. But I’m still not sure it could live up to the standards of a more cosmopolitan city and a more demanding clientele. Looks like all that time in the home country has made my parents soft. Nice try, guys, but next time you'll have to come up with something better.
Lancia Café
Ventúrska 1 - Erdödyho Palác
Bratislava, Slovakia
Tel.: +421 2 209 227 22
Open Mon-Sun 08:00-01:00
photographs 1, 3, 5, 6 Tomáš Hájek for Lidové Noviny; all others lanciacafe.sk
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 31/10/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Restaurant Review: Lancia Café
Monday, August 10, 2009
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 no
t 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.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Restaurant Review: Shiso
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 06/06/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
When I visited Shiso, I didn't smell bad. I was well-dressed, and it was around two in the afternoon, well within the restaurant's published lunch hours. Still, I felt as if I had brought a rain cloud to a beach party – although this particular party consisted only of one waiter, the head chef, and the general manager.
"Can we have a table for two for lunch?" my friend asked.
The waiter looked hesitantly towards the manager and chef, who were seated at one end of the bar. From behind his laptop, the manager extended an open palm and gave a slow nod. Yes, we could enter. How very benevolent of him.
Then again, Shiso is a part of LS Club – billed as Prague's very first private members' club – which carries the tagline "Exclusive. Sophisticated. LS." Those deigned worthy enough of membership (by invitation only and "limited strictly to Europe's business and social elite") pay an annual fee, currently in the ballpark of 18,000 CZK. In return, they are entitled to various perks, including concierge services; the use of LS's lounge, library, and conference rooms; and a smug sense of superiority over the general population.
Members also receive discounts at the restaurant, which is open to regular folk, too. But not many people, members or otherwise, seem to be going to Shiso at the moment. On both of my visits, one of which was on a Saturday night (albeit on a holiday weekend), there was only one other couple in the fairly vast dining room. And almost nobody I've talked to has heard of the place. When I tell them it is on U Milosrdných, at the former location of the Italian restaurant La Scena and, before that, the French restaurant La Scène, some bells start to ring. But even then, no one really seems to care.
Too bad, because the food at Shiso is definitely worth a visit. Their executive chef is Paul Day, an Englishman who has lots of experience in upper-crust Asian restaurants, including branches of the celebrated Japanese chain NOBU in London and Milan. For Shiso, he has created a menu of small dishes from across Asia that are meant to be shared.
Many of these are familiar, but have been amped up with a few unusual touches. The two small chicken satay skewers (210 CZK) were covered in a classic spicy-sweet peanut sauce, along with some fried spring onions that added a nice crispy texture to the dish. And the beef massaman curry (490 CZK) that I had as a main course was better than any massaman I've ever tried: tender clumps of shredded beef in a sweet, perfectly seasoned sauce, served in a rustic clay bowl. Both in flavor and presentation, Mr. Day's dishes are meticulously rendered.
But it's unfortunate that so many of them are so similar. During my dinner visit, my companion and I ordered eight different dishes, most of them the "small plates," in order to sample as many as we could. We had the crispy squid (220 CZK), the black pepper baby back ribs (210 CZK), the duck watermelon salad (440 CZK), the beef fillet with umeshu sauce (650 CZK), and more. Each of these was very good on its own – the ribs, with their sticky crust of crushed black pepper, were particularly outstanding – but in combination, they were far too sweet.
I'd been hoping that the duck salad would provide a refreshing reprieve from all the sugariness, but it, too, was coated in a sweet brown sauce. Nonetheless, the combination of Thai basil and fresh watermelon with the crispy bits of duck and buttery cashew nuts was electric. It certainly didn't need the fried spring onion topping, which was a pleasant surprise on the chicken satay but grew 
old very quickly after it appeared on dish after dish. A little more creativity with the garnishes would definitely have helped.
The same goes for the desserts, which are nonexistent except for a tempura of deep-fried lychees, bananas, and pieces of chocolate (280 CZK). It was tasty, but on the boring side. If only from a strictly business standpoint: what is Shiso thinking? Everyone knows that desserts give the best profit margins; flour, sugar, and eggs cost practically nothing.
Instead, it seems, Shiso plays the game of hidden costs. The minuscule bowl of rice that came with my curry wasn't listed on the menu and wasn't offered by the waitress, but it came automatically and ended up costing 90 CZK. Then there is the fact that a ten-percent service charge is included in the bill – again, without being listed on the menu, as is customary if you're including tip in a country where that practice is almost nonexistent.
I don't care how exclusive you are, or if your doorman is dressed "in a designer suit," as LS Club's online pamphlet advertises. Because I didn't scrutinize the receipt on my fist visit, I ended up leaving a 22% tip – far more than the wait staff at Shiso deserved. They were friendly and timely, but didn't seem to know much about the menu and had a hard time describing the dishes. I would expect more from a place that has hyped itself up as much as this one has.
If you like nice Asian food, though, you should definitely try Shiso. I would especially recommend the weekday Bento Business Box lunch special (450 CZK including a glass of wine); the expensively-decorated space is truly beautiful, especially when the light streams in through the skylights during the day. Just stroll in like you belong there, ignore any snootiness, and remember to check your receipt, and you'll be just fine.
Shiso Restaurant
LS Club
U Milosrdných 6
Praha 1 – Old Town
map
Tel: 222 312 677
Open Tues-Sun 12:00-16:00 (lunch), 19:00-23:00 (dinner)
photographs: 1, 3, 4, 6 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others shiso.cz
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Food news: the Food Fest sets up, Zinc debuts, and Kogo and Kolkovna make a baby
The weekend forecast doesn't look too promising, but I'm hoping the sun will come out for the third annual Prague Food Festival, organized by Maurer's Grand Restaura
nt Guide. This years' indulging will take place between Mánesův and Charles bridges on the Old Town side of the Vltava, with some booths located on land and others set up on waterside pontoons. Participating restaurants include Aromi, Café Imperial, and V Zátiší, among many others.
The Hilton Prague Old Town has officially opened the new version of its restaurant, following the departure of Gordon Ramsay's Michelin-starred venture Maze Prague earlier this year. The new concept, called Zinc, is headed up by Ari Mun
andar, former executive chef of Essensia at the Mandarin Oriental Prague. His menu is described as "modern European cooking with an Asian twist," and includes dishes like crab cake and sweet corn sorbet, miso-glazed Chilean sea bass, and baked pineapple with star anise and cinnamon.
Jean-François and Nadine Musso, formerly of Passion Chocolat in Vinohrady, are back to making their i
rresistible pastries and bonbons. This time, they're located in the U Nováků pasáž off Vodičkova, and their shop is called Pâtisserie St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Mama Coffee has opened up a new, roomier location on Korunní, and Aromi offshoot La Finestra is now in full, delicious swing.
Kogo Group's lackluster sister, L'Angolo, is being remade yet again -- this time with the help of Kolkovna Group, which is collaborating with Ko
go to form a third local dining superpower, Koko Group. Under Koko's management, L'Angolo will be transformed into Fragola, a high-end combination sushi/Mediterranean restaurant/bar/club/"art cafe" that will have live DJs, serve food into the wee hours, and offer a Sunday brunch.
A little complicated, maybe, but it just might work.
images: praguefoodfestival.com, zinc.cz, musso-praha.com, kogofragola.cz
Monday, May 18, 2009
Restaurant Review: China Fusion
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 02/05/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
The restaurant was empty. Except, that is, for a table in the far corner, occupied by two men and a woman who were evidently well on their way to being very drunk. As she tried to light a cigarette, the woman knocked a glass of red wine across the table; the other two shouted and jeered. Their profanities almost drowned out the waiter's inquiry as to whether he should take our coats.
I settled into my seat and took in the ambiance, or what little of it there was. With its stark energy-saving light bulbs and bare walls, the large room felt cold and gloomy, and a soundtrack of woozy ambient music didn't help, either. I wasn't sure if the atmosphere would have been better or worse if our sloshed co-patrons hadn't been there.
So this was China Fusion. I'd wondered about the restaurant for some time, but had never made it up the stairs in Světozor to check it out. Now I was close to regretting even coming here in the first place.
Still, I had to give the food a try. I'd heard it wasn’t bad, and I'd been looking for some good Chinese for a while now. I was intrigued by the energizing soup (140 CZK), which was described as including ten different Chinese herbs. Maybe it would help me get rid of the migraine I'd been nursing for the past few days.
Now, I'll admit that my palate probably isn't developed enough to distinguish ten different Chinese herbs in a broth, but I can definitely recognize when two dishes are almost exactly the same. My mother had ordered the chicken broth with ginseng (180 CZK), but it was more or less indistinguishable from my special energizing soup. Both were black in color, contained chicken and some unchewable herbs, and were basically flavorless. I did not feel particularly energized.
Or maybe I was just annoyed by our waitress, who every few minutes came over to commit one of the most egregious sins of Czech service: the refilling of Mattoni. Again and again, she came by to pick up our water bottles and fill up our glasses.
Can somebody please explain to me why so many waiters feel it necessary to do this? Why do they haunt my table, ready to pop in and interrupt my conversation every time I take a sip of water? Do I look incapable of picking up the Mattoni bottle and pouring it myself? Maybe it never occurred to any of them that I might want to keep my drink cold and my bubbles bubbly for as long as possible.
This practice is especially obnoxious when done with bottled beer, as it becomes warm and flat much more quickly in the glass. One of my companions had to request that the waitress refrain from pouring his Plzeň for him (the beer is bottled only; one of the choices is Asahi, a Japanese beer that our waitress claimed was from China).
At least the food came promptly. My main course was the Cantonese duck (1/4 duck for 370 CZK), which came with the traditional chopped spring onions and cucumbers, hoi sin sauce, and Chinese pancakes (ordered separately for 50 CZK). The meat could have been a little more tender and its skin more flavorful, but it still tasted great rolled up in the pancake with the other ingredients.
Another successful dish was the chicken steak fried in almonds with lime sauce (310 CZK). The sauce was a bright, radioactive-looking yellow, so I was a little skeptical of it – but combined with the slightly sweet, crispy chicken battered in almonds, its sharp flavor was surprisingly delicious.
The same couldn't be said for the marinated octopus (130 CZK), which was super-rubbery, or the spring rolls (110 CZK), which were nicely crunchy but were filled with a negligible amount of vegetables and came with a boring dipping sauce (when will Asian restaurants stop using that same bottled sweet chili sauce already? If anyone finds a restaurant that makes their own dipping sauce for spring rolls, I want to hear about it). Then there was the udon noodle soup with vegetables (148 CZK), whose veggies bore a very close resemblance to the familiar supermarket mixture of frozen peas, corn, and diced carrots.
Udon noodles are Japanese, anyway, as is sushi, which China Fusion also has on its menu. Is that what the "fusion" part is supposed to be, or have they just added sushi as a kind of afterthought, as so many restaurants seem to be doing nowadays? I didn't manage to find out because I don't really like ordering sushi when it's just a sidebar on the menu and the restaurant isn't very popular. I always worry that the fish isn't going to be fresh.
I have mixed feelings about China Fusion. Some of the food is good, quite authentic, and different from the regular kuřecí kung pao you'll find at the cheaper Chinese restaurants around town. But the menu seems to be a little too large for them to handle, so some dishes end up getting carbon-copied (like the soups) or faked a little (like the udon). And with its lack of windows, charmless décor, and drab setting in the Světozor pasáž, I wouldn’t want to be sitting there again anytime soon. Do they do takeout, perhaps?
As we waited for our check, a waiter uncorked the rowdy trio's third bottle of red wine since we'd gotten there. It didn't seem entirely necessary; one of the men had already fallen asleep with his chin resting on his chest in a drunken stupor, his forehead dangerously close to slamming itself down on top of his espresso cup.
Looks like the guy could have used some of that energizing soup.
China Fusion
Pasáž Světozor
Vodičkova 41
Praha 1 - New Town
Tel: 224 946 268
Open Mon-Sun 11:00-23:00
photographs Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others chinafusion.cz
Monday, April 6, 2009
Restaurant Review: Buddha-Bar / Siddharta-Café
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 28/03/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
On a chilly evening in late January, a Chinese dragon, held aloft by a team of puppeteers, pranced up and down a single block of Jakubská street. The adjacent building was lined with torch candles and shiny cars, and a small herd of heavily-perfumed people hovered by its double-door entranceway.
The two floors inside were packed with celebrities clutching champagne-raspberry cocktails; every few seconds, they would pause mid-conversation to pose for a photographer's flash or answer a question on-camera. Most of them ignored the waiters carrying silver platters of hors d'oeuvres and talked over the speeches of the evening's emcee, Marek Vašut, and his special gu
est, Prince Andreas von Lichtenstein.
Czech glamorpusses – susceptible as they are to the charms of trendy international brands – had long anticipated the arrival of the world's first Buddha-Bar Hotel and the lavish grand opening party that was to go along with it. This was just the right kind of project to get the LV contingent all hot and bothered: after the phenomenal success Buddha-Bar experienced upon its 1996 debut in Paris, a slew of sister bar-restaurants popped up around the world, all following the pan-Asian theme and large-scale dimensions of the famed original. Dubai, London, and Sao Paolo all have their own Buddha-Bars; now Prague has not only a Buddha-Bar, but a Buddha-Bar Hotel, too.
Yet when all the well-constructed hype wears off, will anybody still care? And, more importantly, should they?
They might, but they probably shouldn't. It's true that the new Buddha-Bar is something to behold, for its unapologetic gaudiness if nothing else. The downstairs space (referred to as 'Buddha-Bar' proper; the upstairs area is occupied by the Siddharta-Café), though smaller than some of the other Buddha-Bar incarnations, is huge by Prague standards. A balcony-style bar, itself with a capacity of up to 100 patrons, overlooks a 150-seat dining area, where dark bamboo furniture and gold and crimson-colored walls flank a 2.6-meter-high Buddha. Behind the statue is a curved wall covered in orchids; to one side, under an alcove, is a more intimate banquette section. A DJ spins the techno-fied world music that has become a signature Buddha-Bar feature (CDs are for sale in the upstairs boutique). The overall effect is part bordello, part opium den, part generic Asia cliché, although the sheer grandness of the space makes it all very striking.
But Buddha-Bar has at least one major flaw: the boldness of its décor doesn't extend to its menu. The selection is mostly a hodgepodge of well-worn Asian favorites – you've got your sesame-encrusted tuna, your pad thai, your Madras curry. None of them was particularly terrible, or especially great, but they all lacked any sort of ingenuity. The food was, in a word, boring.
And when you're being charged this much money, boring is a deal breaker. 365 CZK for a couple of fried vegetarian spring rolls? Those better be the best damn spring rolls I've ever eaten in my life.
They weren't; at best, they were dull. So was the spicy tuna tartare with avocado and pink grapefruit (330 CZK), a nice idea made with fresh ingredients that somehow ended up missing the flavor. Ditto the tiger shrimp fried in coconut (460 CZK) – the coconut was almost indistinguishable and the accompanying basil dipping sauce was very bland.
I yearned for better sauces, but I didn't find any. The Peking duck, priced at an astronomical 875 CZK, was nothing but a row of seared duck breast on a bed of pear compote. Nicely seared duck breast, yes, but only a nondescript sweet compote? Where was the complexity of flavor, the sauce that you want to lick off the plate when you're done? Where, for God's sakes, were the carbohydrates? (Peking duck is traditionally served with Chinese pancakes; at Buddha-Bar, all side dishes must be ordered separately at additional cost).
The only plate that even hinted at the possibility of excellence was the fillet mignon cooked teppan yaki style (875 CZK) – the meat was rare and as soft as warm butter. But it came with yet another uninteresting sauce, some shiitake mushrooms, and a mixture of cabbage and bean sprouts.
The unmistakable soullessness of Buddha-Bar's kitchen started to make sense when I investigated the chain's other locations. At the Kiev restaurant, the menu is almost exactly the same as Prague's, and the London one isn't far off, either. The chefs here aren't working seasonally; they aren't creating anything of their own or using their imaginations. They're slaves to the Buddha-Bar brand, and because the Buddha-Bar brand requires a broad appeal, their restaurants have to play it safe. It's like T.G.I. Friday's, but with maki rolls instead of Buffalo wings.
Even the cocktails were disappointing – they do them better and cheaper around the corner at Bar and Books – and the service was unpolished, if friendly. Upstairs at Siddhartha-Café, a klutzy waitress stuck her whole finger in my companion's bowl of rice as she was setting it down on the table and pretended as if nothing had happened, and there were visible fingerprints all over our spoons.
I would write more about Siddhartha-Café if I had room, but I'll just say that it's pretty much the same thing that's going on downstairs (overpriced food and Buddhas), only lunch-oriented and more generously lit – Buddha-Bar is so dark that I saw a waitress giving a guy a flashlight so he could read the menu.
He shouldn't have bothered. For all the fire-breathers and dragons and paparazzi, Buddha-Bar is a big yawn. Not the reaction they must have hoped for after a 350-million crown renovation, but I'm sure they'll do fine without me: this town has enough trend-loving glamorpusses to fill even a space this large right up to its brim.
Buddha-Bar / Siddharta Café
Jakubská 8
Praha 1 - Old Town
map
Tel: 221 776 300
Buddha-Bar open Mon-Sun 18:00-late
Siddharta-Café open Mon-Sun 11:30-late
photographs 3, 4, 5, 6 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others buddha-bar-hotel.cz
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Food news: Buddha Bar opens, Prague discovers fusion food, and a Czech team debuts at the Bocuse
Last Thursday, the long-awaited Buddha Bar Hotel held a massive grand openin
g party -- an affair notable for its many czelebrity attendees, a live electric violin interpretation of Metallica, and some very uninspired hors d'oeuvres (tomato and mozzarella balls on toothpicks, for one). The Buddha Bar Restaurant and its upstairs lunch spot, Siddharta Café, are ready for business, too, offering fancily-priced Asian food along with Caesar salads, club sandwiches, and other room service standards.
Around the corner from Buddha Bar, another newly-opened upscale hotel, the Barcelo, has introduced a fusion restaurant of its own: Zlatý Anděl Fusion Restaurant & Café. The kitchen is headed up by the respected French chef Martial Clement, who recently bailed on his short-lived post at Zahrada v Opeře. No word yet on who will replace Mr. Clement in the RFE building restaurant.
Pish-posh members' club LS Club will officially launch this month in the Old Town space formerly occupied by La Scene and (later) La Scena. Its amenities are to include a Library, Crystal Bar, and a signature eatery, Restaurant Shiso. The restaurant will be run by freshly-imported English chef Paul Day -- who specializes, naturally, in Asian cuisine.
Kampa Park sous chef Jan Všetečka traveled to Lyon last week to represent the Czech Republic in the final round of the prestigious international cooking competition Bocuse d'Or. Všetečka and his team placed fourteenth out of twenty-four countries, a very respectable ranking for the first Czech team ever to participate in the Bocuse. 2009's top honors went to Norway (gold), Sweden (silver), and France (bronze).
photos: buddha-bar-hotel.cz, barcelo.com, lsclub.cz, bocusedor.com
