This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 17/01/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
How much does it cost to make a bowl of hummus?
The much-loved Middle Eastern spread's main ingredients are chickpeas and tahini, along with some garlic, olive oil, and lemon. So if I told you that someone was charging 225 CZK for a serving, you might think that was a bit much -- even if it was a reasonably large portion and came with a few pickled vegetables and (stale) pita chips.
But there is at least one restaurant in Prague that can get away with charging large sums of money for chickpea paste. Its name is Dahab, and it has a unique calling card: its colorful Arabic-style atm
osphere. Although the main room is large, it still feels cozy; stained-glass lanterns hang from the vaulted ceiling, Persian rugs cover the floors, and the air is thick with the sweet scent of shisha tobacco. In the back of the restaurant are private salons where patrons can sit on the ground and sip tea from low tables or have a full dinner for up to 35 people. On the weekends, there is live music accompanied by belly dancers (more on them later), and it is a favorite hangout spot for Prague's Arab community.
So coming to Dahab is something of an experience, which might explain not only the high prices, but also the fact that the restaurant's reservation book is often completely full.
In its original incarnation, Dahab was a couscous house inside Roxy, where club kids could chill out and sip tea in between bouts of frenetic dance-floor activity. Then the restaurant moved around the corner, expanded its menu to include Middle Eastern as well as North African cuisines, and later – during a post-flood renovation – opened a fast food eatery facing Dlouhá. The fast food place, called Yalla, is in my experience not fantastic (although to be fair, I've only ever tried it in the wee hours of the morning).
The food at Dahab proper is definitely a step up, but it still leaves something to be desired. For a sampling of the restaurant's specialties, guests can order one of the mezze platters, such as the Grand Royal Mezze (800 CZK per person) – a feast that includes couscous, falafel, hummus, baba ghanoush, chicken drumsticks, grilled lamb cutlets, merguezi sausage, fried eggplant, pickled cheese with olives, vine leaves, tabbouleh salad, harissa, and pita bread. That sounds like a lot, and it is, although the portions of each dish are actually fairly small.
I just wish the cooking itself was a little bit better. The stuffed vine leaves were flavorless, poorly-wrapped, and filled with undercooked rice. The falafel tasted as if it had been fried in oil that had been used a few too many times, and I've had better tabbouleh at far cheaper restaurants. For the money, one would hope to find some of the best Middle Eastern food in the city.
Not the case here, unfortunately. My lamb chops baked with herbs and served with spinach couscous (520 CZK) were overcooked, fatty, and didn't taste especially herb-y. The couscous was all right, but the dish could have used some kind of sauce, as it was fairly dry. I'd also hoped for more from the chicken tajine (295 CZK), a Moroccan stew of meat, vegetables, and dried fruit slow-cooked in a special clay pot – the chicken was nice and tender, but the tajine lacked the complex blend of spices that is characteristic of North African cuisine.
I did very much like the chickpea shoraba (80 CZK), a hearty soup served with some unfortunately chewy croutons, and the homemade merguezi (lamb sausage, 380 CZK). The selection of teas is good too, though I'd venture to say that charging 100 CZK for a 0.25L pot of Yogi tea (black tea with spices, milk, and honey) might be overdoing it a little.
The wait staff is decent (if sometimes a little forgetful when it comes to refilling drink orders) and seem to do quite well even when the restaurant is very busy. Apparently, however, tips are included – which I didn't realize until we had received our bill and noticed a 3x 100 CZK service charge added to the 3500 CZK total sum. Including service is the restaurant's choice, but since it's not the norm here, it only seems fair to make that fact very clear on the menu so that customers don't over-tip unnecessarily.
So you might end up paying more than you wanted to for food that was pretty good, but not perfect. Will you come back? You just might, especially if you happened to visit Dahab on a Thursday, Friday, or Saturday evening. Those are the days when dinner is accompanied by a keyboardist wailing Arabic songs – and a live belly dancer.
I'll admit that when I heard "live belly dancing," I expected the performer in question to be of the curvaceous Middle Eastern variety. Instead, the dancer was a tall, slim blonde named Šárka, dressed in sheer pants and a jewel-encrusted bra. As she gyrated her hips and smiled seductively at the seated men, including my own male dining companion, I realized that the fascinating story I was in the middle of telling would have to wait. All eyes were on the dancer; she was completely mesmerizing.
At one point, several of the Arabic guests stood up and began dancing, too, and singing and clapping along to the music. Next to my table, a grinning middle-aged couple was recording the performance on a video camera. It turned out that those were Šárka's parents, and they were very proud.
And we, like everybody else – and in spite of Dahab's imperfections – were having a lot of fun.
Dahab
Dlouhá 33
Praha 1 - Old Town
map
Tel: (+420) 224 827 375
Open Mon-Sun 14:00-01:00
photographs 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others dahab.cz
Monday, February 9, 2009
Restaurant Review: Dahab (CLOSED)
Monday, August 11, 2008
Restaurant Review: Sahara
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 02/08/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Imagine you're a would-be restaurateur in a booming European metropolis. Through luck or cleverness, you've been blessed with an incredible spot for your restaurant, a sprawling corner space with a huge storefront and impressive outdoor seating; it's even on a busy square and in one of the city's trendiest neighborhoods. You invest in expensive furnishings, in creating a theme and an instantly appealing atmosphere, and soon enough, your restaurant becomes a regular hangout for the beautiful and the well-to-do.
What do you do then? Do you make every effort to keep your fancy (and surely fickle) clientele happy? Or do you serve second-rate food and hire a staff that couldn't make it through a day working the register at McDonald's?
All of Prag
ue should be buzzing about Sahara Café. It truly does have one of the city's most striking set-ups – two spacious, breezy floors of cozy couches, Moroccan details, and a wraparound balcony overlooking a large and well-manicured courtyard garden. But whenever I mention Sahara to people I know, they all have more or less the same opinion of the place: it's got an awesome atmosphere, but the service is absolutely brutal, and the food is at best 'okay.'
I'd have to agree with them. At times, the level of service is embarrassingly low. On one visit, instead of walking around the table to stand beside me to serve my entrée as any half-sensible person would have done, our server leaned over my companion and stretched his arm two meters across the table to put my plate down in front of me. In performing this balancing act, he was forced to tip the dish, sending the piping-hot sauce dribbling off the plate, through the slats of the wooden table, down my leg, and into my shoe.
The waiter seemed to find this hilarious. I didn't.
During another dinner, our waitress disappeared for a full forty-five minutes after clearing our plates, only to reappear in the background, giggling and playing tug-of-war with a male server and the menus he was holding. We never did manage to flag her down. Instead, we scouted out another waiter to ask him for our check. He looked a bit confused, but to his credit, he did get us the bill. Eventually.
So some of the staff working the tables at Sahara is mildly dense. Still, it would be unfair to say that all of the problems are their fault. I suspect the restaurant is understaffed, and since they don't seem to know even the most elementary basics, what waiters they do hire must receive little to no training on the job. They could really use a good manager.
And it looks like they might need some help in the kitchen, too. Waits between courses can be far too long, and when they finally do arrive, the portions tend to be small and the food is on the greasy side. A plate of ravioli (220 CZK) arrived swimming in a soup of butter, and the hummus (120 CZK) had been drowned in olive oil. An octopus salad (190 CZK) that came with crushed olives, bell peppers, carrots, and arugula was one of the highlights, but olive oil was used too heavily in that dish, as well.
Then there was the mysteriously crunchy filling in the meat lasagna (220 CZK) and a grilled tuna steak in a rosemary and garlic marinade (480 CZK) that was overcooked to the point of leatheriness. But all that was downright gourmet compared to the awful "oriental style" tiger prawn stir fry (480 CZK) I had one night as an entrée.
If the stir fry's sauce had tasted better, I might have been more upset at losing part of it to the inside of my ballerina flat. As it stood, though, the gravy was little more than diluted soy sauce and had completely drenched the rice at the bottom of the dish. Worse still, the rice was of the cheapest variety and the prawns had been cooked until they were mushy and dry. The only vegetables accompanying the shrimp were some large, lazily-chopped pieces of fresh ginger, red chili peppers, and green onions, plus the fresh parsley that was dusted over just about every dish that left the kitchen. I wouldn't have paid 100 CZK for this plate, let alone close to 500 CZK.
Sahara cheapens itself further with a scattered international menu, apparently designed to please as many palates as possible. Italian pastas are listed next to Argentinian meats and Middle Eastern mezzes, along with French-style foie gras and Asian-esque prawns. Perhaps this randomness is meant to reflect the strange inconsistencies in the décor. What, for example, are Indian antiques and a Thai Buddha doing in a restaurant called Sahara? I guess if it isn't European, it's all pretty much the same thing.
Whether Sahara's major problem is cluelessness, carelessness, or a combination of both, it doesn't really matter in the end. The setup is enticing enough that even with the bad service and mediocre food, it still gets plenty of customers.
But Sahara could easily be a knockout, a restaurant so popular that despite its massive size, it would be impossible to snag a table there without booking in advance. I would love to see it transformed into a classy, honest restaurant with professional staff and well-made food. The space is just too good for the amateur circus that’s running there now.
Sahara Café
Náměstí Míru 6
Praha 2 – Vinohrady
map
Tel: 222 514 987
images: praguespoon.com, saharacafe.cz
