Restaurant Review: U Petrské Věže (CLOSED)

Note to readers: As of 30/11/09, U Petrské Věže is no longer in operation.

There's something old-fashioned about U Petrské Věže. You'd think I was talking about the 14th-century building in which it resides, with its vaulted ceilings and Gothic cellar, or the restaurant's crystal chandeliers and antique-style furniture. But the kind of history I have in mind is a little more recent: waiters suited up in ties, black vests, and tangerine-colored dress shirts; menus laminated and bound in padded faux leather. It's 1995 all over again.

That, after all, is the year U Petrské Věže opened, and there don't seem to have been too many updates since. The dishes are still mostly scaled-up, if not exactly modernized, Czech classics, in a style that used to be popular among a certain segment of locals. Nowadays, when people want a fancy meal, they go for Italian or French or Asian; the Petrské Věžes and Modrá Kachničkas have been left for the tourists, or the very occasional Czech who wants to take foreign visitors to a nice local restaurant that isn't a pub.

The fallout from this shift in tastes was obvious on my visit to U Petrské Věže. The only other guests all evening were four older British tourists, who seemed happy enough with their restaurant choice. The wild boar in rosehip sauce sounded "fabulous," and they puzzled good-naturedly over the fresh rye bread and bowlful of sádlo that the waiter placed on their table at the start of their meal. They might have been even more confused if they'd known that they were about to be charged 40 CZK each for that bread and lard, even if they didn't touch any of it.

I wasn't confused, though. This was Flashback 1995, and couverts were very trendy in 1995. Was it also trendy to heinously overcharge for beverages? It must have been, otherwise U Petrské Věže wouldn't be selling 0.5l bottles of Vittel for 140 CZK and beers for 70 CZK.

The beer, it must be said, is actually one of U Petrské Věže's strong points; it is from a small brewery, Rohozec, and is tapped into frosty mugs. It's nice to see a restaurant that has managed to resist Pilsner Urquell's strong-armed tactics, even if it has to charge a lot of money to make up for it (the restaurant also has a cellar full of Czech and Moravian wines, but I didn't get to try any of those).

So the beer at U Petrské Věže might be worth its price, but the food – at least for the most part – definitely isn't. As my starter, I had the beef broth with sherry and Celestine noodles (120 CZK), and it was so salty that I couldn't eat more than a few spoonfuls. The sherry flavor was pretty overpowering, too, although I did like the dill-flavored, pancake-like homemade noodles.

Then there was my main course, the wild duck breast with "old Bohemian black sauce" and potato pancakes (440 CZK). I actually liked the sauce, a thick and sticky (and indeed nearly black) stew, fragrant with prunes. The problem was the meat itself: it was brutally overcooked, to the point where there was no pink hue left in the center of the breast at all. It was just a fat, gray, incredibly tough lump of meat. I realize that cooking duck breast all the way through is sort of the local way of doing it (as opposed to the French, who like theirs pink and tender), but judging by this example, the local way is just not very good. This was a waste of a perfectly decent piece of meat.

Another part of the dish seemed a little bit off, too: the potato pancakes. They were very small and thick, which is fine, but they were also quite sweet, which was not fine. They tasted not as if they should be served next to a roast duck breast, but covered with jam and powdered sugar. Later, I would find out why.

Chefs often repeat elements from dish to dish – the same little salad here, the same celery puree there. It makes their lives easier, and most of the time, it doesn't really matter too much. But it's only happened to me once before that I ate the same thing for my main course and my dessert (at the Mexican restaurant Cantina, where I was given the same chocolate syrup over both chicken breast and chocolate cake).

You can see where this is going. I ordered the old-style Czech pancake (180 CZK) for dessert. When it arrived, it was not one pancake, but a few small ones – the exact same kind that had been served with my duck dish. They came drenched in a similar sauce to the duck's, also made of prunes, although this one tasted strongly of alcohol. Some crumbled gingerbread was sprinkled on top. The pancakes definitely made more sense in the sweet version, but by that point, I'd already had my fill.

Not everything was bad at U Petrské Věže. My companion ordered an unusual appetizer, a fruit salad with crayfish tails (280 CZK) in a light mayonnaise dressing, that was actually very fresh and tasty. The service was attentive, and I liked that all the food was served on pretty porcelain plates.

But meat is definitely not this restaurant's strong point – even if it makes up most of the menu. When I tried a bite of my friend's roasted pheasant breast (430 CZK), it was so dry and stringy that part of it instantly became lodged between two of my back teeth. Upon further mastication, I realized that the piece was full of tendon, or cartilage, or something. So I did the old unchewable meat trick: I retrieved a tissue from my purse and discreetly spat out the offending bite.

Not the most elegant thing to do in a nice restaurant, I know. But as it turned out, this restaurant wasn't all that nice, anyway.

U Petrské Věže
Petrská 12
Praha 1 - Nové Město
map
Tel.: 222 329 856

Open Mon-Fri 12:00-24:00, Sat-Sun 18:00-01:00

photographs Tomáš Krist for Lidové noviny; all others upetrskeveze.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 28/11/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: U Emy Destinnové

It seldom seems to happen – in this country, anyway – that a restaurant's best asset is its kitchen. Lots of places are long on atmosphere, and nowadays you can even count on reasonably good service at most higher-end restaurants. But good chefs are still few and far between.

One of the exceptions is U Emy Destinnové, whose owner and head chef Steven Trumpfheller outclasses both his restaurant's location and its waitstaff. His menu is eclectic but not unfocused, a mix of mostly American and Italian-style classics.

I just can't get over the pumpkin risotto (180 CZK) I had there the other night. Creamy without being too heavy, the dish was a perfect balance of flavors. That was also because of one other crucial addition: bacon, fried to near crispiness (this is an American chef, after all, who knows how to cook his bacon) and folded into the risotto in small pieces. The fact is that bacon will make more or less any dish taste better – I recently sampled some bacon-flavored chocolate, and I loved it – but in the risotto, combined with the pumpkin's distinctive sweetness and the sharp tang of Parmesan, it was a truly inspired combo.

I couldn't say as much for U Emy Destinnové's interior design. Before the restaurant's recent renovation, it had a quirky, old-fashioned living room feel to it, with lots of strange knickknacks and some ratty gray couches left over from its previous incarnation as Czech restaurant JB Club. The getup felt a bit inappropriate for the food, to be sure, so a refurb was definitely in order. Now, the place has been tidied up and the couches have been reupholstered, but it's lost some of its charm. The beige walls are a little drab, and the maroon-colored runners over the tables feel out of date, like something you'd find in an old hotel restaurant in Communist-era Czechoslovakia.

On my second visit, there was a massive group dinner taking up the whole of the large front room (U Emy Destinnové offers several banquet menus), so my friends and I were seated in the little room in the back. That would have been perfectly cozy if we hadn't been within spitting distance of the bathrooms – they were separated from us by a partition wall, but every time someone left the toilet door open we were washed over by a familiar, unpleasant aroma. Because there was no self-closing mechanism on the bathroom doors, one of us would have to get up and shut them ourselves – and I don't especially like playing toilet porter on an evening out to dinner.

Then there was the problem of the lights being too dim, making it hard to read the menu and see the food properly. And although live piano music is a nice idea, this particular piano player didn't really do it for me. His style was aggressive and unpleasant, not fading gently into the background as it should have, but overriding our conversation. Moreover, he had a creepy habit of staring directly at me and my female friend for long periods of time as he played.

During earlier, pre-renovation visits to U Emy Destinnové, I remember being bowled over by the service. This time, it wasn't bad by any means – particularly on my first visit, when the waiter was impressively on point – but it did occasionally seem slightly amateurish. During the first evening, the server eagerly told us what dishes they had available as specials, but on the second, I had to ask if they had any specials before he thought to tell us. And I found their rattling off of all the aperitifs they had on offer (even when we had already declined) a little annoying.

Still, I was impressed with how timely the service was, even with that massive group in the front room. I had been dismayed when we first walked in that night – usually, kitchens get overwhelmed by the demands of the banquet and the timing of the smaller tables' meals suffers. But everything came out at just the right moment, and they even found the opportunity to show us the lamb and swordfish they had on special that night.

I had the swordfish in the form of a carpaccio (215 CZK), and it was great – fresh, beautifully sliced, and arranged around a small salad with capers and cherry tomatoes. They have a thing for raw meat here, with three kinds of carpaccio (including bison carpaccio with dried figs and pecorino cheese, 215 CZK), a lamb tartare, and often a couple of additional types of carpaccio on the specials list. But there are other tasty appetizers, too, such as the deep-fried calamari, zucchini, and lemon (155 CZK) or the wild French duck breast with blackberry port wine demi-glaze (175 CZK).

There are a lot of originals here, and having seen the same dishes over and over again on local menus, I can appreciate the ingenuity – especially when it comes out right. The golden capon chicken served over sweet corn relish (230 CZK) was tender and juicy, with browned, crispy skin, and its mildly creamy sweet corn sauce was a nice little bit of Americana to go with it. Paired with some fluffy garlic mashed potatoes (65 CZK), this was real soul food.

So, the American in the basement of famous Czech opera singer Ema Destinnová's birth house can really cook. I'm not totally convinced by his baking (the Philadelphia cheesecake, 105 CZK, had a very soggy crust), but I only managed to sample one dessert. The portions are big, and the prices are remarkably decent. I would urge you to give U Emy Destinnové a chance. Even if a few of the other elements are a little out of place, the food is definitely worth it.

U Emy Destinnové
Kateřinská 7
Praha 2 - Nové Město
map
Tel.: 224 918 425
Open Mon-Fri 11:30-23:30, Sat 18:00-23:30. Closed Sunday.

images 1, 2, 6 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others uemydestinnove.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 03/10/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: Céleste

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 30/05/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

The freshly-posted instructions on the outside of the Dancing House are very clear: if you want to get to the top of this icon of modern architecture, you'll have to pay a visit to Céleste first.

The Dancing House is a tricky sort of building. Its towers, nicknamed "Fred and Ginger" for their abstract resemblance to a pair of dancers, are oddly shaped – Ginger, the one made out of glass, is tapered to mimic a woman's form – and its windows are staggered in a wavelike pattern. But Frank O. Gehry's and Vlado Milunić's deconstructivist masterpiece is a risky restaurant location for a different reason: it doesn't get much foot traffic, and there's plenty of the other kind.

To get to the restaurant, you pass through Céleste's small ground-floor bar, where the bartender hits the elevator button and calls upstairs to announce your imminent arrival. And once you're up on the seventh floor, the view is wonderful: the river, the castle, the far-off greenery of Petřín. You'd even forget about the traffic jam downstairs, if you couldn't see a half-kilometer-long line of cars stretching up to Karlovo náměstí.

Céleste is sister to one of Prague's best restaurants, Angel. But here the cuisine is French, not Asian, and the mood is more upscale – white tablecloths, fussier waiters, and slightly higher prices. By all appearances, Céleste is not dissimilar to the previous tenant, La Perle de Prague, which closed recently after having operated since the Dancing House's completion in 1996.

Yet anyone who has visited both restaurants would surely agree that Céleste is a major step up from the overpriced, uninspired La Perle. The new head chef is Gwendal Le Ruyet, a Frenchman from Brittany who spent five years working under Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse, among other prestigious international posts. His cooking – much like that of Sofia Smith, who helms Angel's kitchen – is bold and self-assured, with an emphasis on seasonal ingredients.

One of the waiters recommended that I try the lettuce soup as an appetizer, but there was no need; I had been planning on ordering it anyway. I really like cold soups, and this one sounded especially intriguing: a velouté of spring lettuce with pan-seared escargots and tarragon foam (275 CZK). The soup itself turned out to be a rich spinach-green color, full of the snappy flavor of fresh lettuce but slightly under-salted – which didn't really matter because the escargots were very savory (they also, for some reason, seemed to taste mildly of bacon). Some fresh shredded lettuce leaves and a few crunchy miniature croutons added texture to this well-balanced dish.

This is modern French cooking at its best. Le Ruyet has preserved the classic culinary techniques and rich sauces of his predecessors, but the dishes are lighter, more pared-down. He often does away with carbohydrates completely: the preparation of a pan-seared cod fillet (450 CZK as part of a two-course lunch menu; 550 CZK for three courses) cleverly evoked a classic beef Bourguignon, with its thick red wine sauce, pearl onions, and button mushrooms, but there were no potatoes to weigh the meal down.

Another fish dish, the sturgeon fillet (625 CZK) was similarly fresh-tasting and very appropriate for the spring season. It was served with pink grapefruit and fresh radishes, along with a green pea puree that was a nice homage to mushy peas (typically found next to fish and chips in English pubs). The sturgeon was perfectly cooked, but the citrus sauce it came with had an unpleasantly bitter aftertaste, as if some lemon rind had gotten in there by accident.
If you are a die-hard carbohydrate lover, don't worry: Céleste makes their own bread, and it is excellent. We were offered a choice of rosemary, white sesame with onion, black sesame, and rye flavors. Finally, an upscale restaurant that doesn't get its bread from the Mansson bakery like everybody else.

Céleste seems determined to do things differently, and better. Their dessert menu is full of unusual surprises, like the heavenly purple pears with red wine granita, mascarpone, and salted Brittany biscuit (195 CZK). My dinner companion said his roasted lamb with daikon radish and artichokes (595 CZK) was the best he'd ever had in this country, and the server proudly explained that it was organic Moravian lamb, not meat that had been shipped in from New Zealand or elsewhere. And they even offer Mattoni and Bonaqua along with the pricier imported waters.

On both my visits, the service was very good, if a little over-eager. Because I was recognized by a waiter who knew me from my frequent visits to Angel, I can't say for sure that it would be the same for other customers. But I have no doubt that the servers at Céleste will be professional and friendly to everyone who walks into their refined purple and gray-themed dining room.

When you do visit, ask to sit in the "Ginger" section of the restaurant, which is surrounded by glass and has a clearer view. Or, better yet, arrange an evening in their private dining room upstairs, which is absolutely stunning and can seat anywhere from two to twenty people. From there, you can walk out onto the circular terrace that crowns the Fred tower and look out across the city in the fresh air.

When you leave, of course, you'll be walking back into that big intersection. Not the most inspiring setting for a post-dinner walk – but by then, you'll be so drunk on lovely food and magical views that you won't even care.

Céleste Restaurant & Bar
Tančící dům
Rašínovo nábřeží 80
Praha 2 – Nove Mesto
map
Tel: 221 98 41 60

Open Mon-Sat 12:00-14:30, 18:30-22:30. Closed Sunday.

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

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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

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Restaurant Review: Maze by Gordon Ramsay (CLOSED)

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 08/11/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

A previously published Prague Spoon review of Maze by Gordon Ramsay can be found here.

Today, I'm starting with dessert.

I want to discuss a certain gooey little mountain of goodness: the chocolate fondant. A cross between a chocolate flourless cake and a soufflé, it is deliberately undercooked so that its center stays runny. Although the fondant's persistent popularity has turned it into something of an after-dinner menu cliché, it is rarely done exceptionally well. The insides don't ooze from the center because it has been baked for too long, or the cake is underdone and chewy, or it is made with low quality chocolate.

But the fondant at Maze is different.

As my spoon sinks into the cake's spongy crust, a warm gush of melted Belgian chocolate seeps onto my plate. Technically, this fondant is perfect, and it is a creative accomplishment, too. Instead of choosing an obvious accompaniment such as raspberry coulis or crème anglaise, they've paired it with a tangy orange toffee sauce that lends the dark chocolate a citrusy edge and a subtle smokiness. Roasted hazelnuts and a scoop of homemade beurre blanc ice cream add crunch and coolness to an otherwise smooth, hot dish.

For a man as notoriously foul-mouthed as Gordon Ramsay, he is certainly making poetry here.

Mr. Ramsay, of course, is the holder of twelve Michelin stars and the head of a restaurant empire. His reach extends to Tokyo, Dubai, Los Angeles and, most recently, Terminal 5 at London's Heathrow Airport. Maze, his more casual chain of restaurants, now has locations in London, New York, and Prague. He has starred in three television shows, published eighteen cookbooks and memoirs, and contributed a regular column to The Times's Saturday magazine. With so much Ramsay going around, many have questioned whether the ambitious Scotsman might be spreading his talent just a little too thin for his own good.

On each episode of his well-received TV show Kitchen Nightmares, Mr. Ramsay sweeps into a struggling restaurant and figures out how to make it profitable. He trims overcomplicated menus, hollers at incompetent floor managers, and schools chefs in the art of cooking simply and with fresh ingredients. He even throws away hideous furnishings, starts public relations campaigns, and patches up venomous relationships between co-owning family members. Whatever you think of his approach, it's clear that this man knows a thing or two about running a successful restaurant.
So, at Prague's branch of Maze, as my table waited half an hour, then forty-five minutes, then a full hour to receive our main course, I imagined what Mr. Ramsay might be saying to the kitchen staff if this were an episode of Nightmares: "Table nine has been waiting ONE FUCKING HOUR for their entrées! The restaurant's half empty! What are you going to do when this place is full? Fucking hell." And so on.

I would also expect him to have somebody apologize for the delay and assure us that our dishes were on their way. There was no such courtesy. And when the food did come, the beef fillet was cold. At least the waiters managed to top up our water and wine glasses – a lot. So often, in fact, that I started taking sips only after I'd checked that no one was looking to ensure that another server wouldn't swoop in to give me a refill.

The over-attentive service has rankled me on previous visits to Maze, too, when the waiters would not only spend all night performing the endless water-pouring dance (could it be a strategy to get us to buy more of those 180 CZK bottles?), but would systematically dump still water into glasses of sparkling water and vice versa. Part of the problem seems to be that many waiters serve each table, so they are unable to keep track of how often each party is being visited and who is drinking which type of water (I noticed a similar problem when I ate at the Maze restaurant in New York recently, where they also use the multiple-server system).

The inconsistencies in service are all the more frustrating because every staff member was otherwise perfectly willing and courteous. And although Maze's organization occasionally falters, the food rarely does.

Under the masterful direction of chef de cuisine Philip Carmichael, French classics are updated with playful touches. A cilantro-tinged king crab salad (440 CZK, pictured above) slathered in a smooth avocado paste comes with a nest of green apple slivers and a scoop of Bloody Mary-flavored sorbet. A fairly unsophisticated vegetable, red cabbage, is spun into a densely flavored violet puree to accompany the roasted Barbary duck breast (750 CZK, pictured below). And in a nod to the current trend for unusual salty-sweet combinations, the same dish is served with a savory duck confit wrapped in flaky pastry and dusted with powdered sugar (a similar line was toed by a wonderful dessert no longer on the menu, the peanut butter sandwich). The risks here are calculated, not random. The difference is obvious.

As far as Prague's more upscale eating establishments go, this is some of the best value for money in the city. There is no cheating, no scrimping, no artful cover-ups of mediocre ingredients by unskilled hands. In the year since Maze's opening, its culinary standards have been consistently high.
It's too bad, then, that Maze is situated close to one of the seedier parts of town, the Masarykovo train station, and in a hotel whose unattractive lobby can be seen from much of the restaurant. The art deco-style décor is tasteful, and the seating, especially the tables for two, are intimate and comfortable. But the room is a little gloomy, the ceilings a little low, the lights around the bar a little garish – and there are no windows to the outside. I've always found it hard to forget that I'm eating in a Hilton.

The fact that you're visiting a Gordon Ramsay establishment is hard to escape, too. The chinaware is from the Ramsay line, and next to the restaurant entrance is a well-lit bookcase displaying Ramsay's various tomes.

But so what if the guy has an ego? At least he can cook. Prague is much better off now that a chef of Mr. Ramsay's caliber has lifted a leg and marked his Old Town territory. I just hope he comes by to do some maintenance soon.

Last time I checked, those memoirs were looking a little dusty.

Maze by Gordon Ramsay
Hilton Prague Old Town
V Celnici 7
Prague 1
map
Tel: +420 221 822 300

Open Mon-Sun
Breakfast 06:30-10:30
Lunch 12:00-15:00
Dinner 18:00-23:00

Photographs by Jakub Hněvkovský, Lidové noviny

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Restaurant Review: Potrefená Husa

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 11/10/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

As I'm tucking in to my řízek dinner at the newest branch of Potrefená Husa, I receive a text message from a friend. "At Husa," he writes. "Want to come by?"

I look around the restaurant. My friend is nowhere to be seen. "Which Husa?" I reply.

If that anecdote doesn't sound familiar to you yet, it will soon enough. I can't be the only one who's been getting the sense that it's impossible to walk five blocks in any direction in the center of Prague without coming across a Staropramen -branded restaurant.

The brewery's concept – a chain of modern franchised pubs that are pricier than your average hospoda but offer quality beer, good food, and friendly service – has proven to be an enormous success. The first Potrefená Husa (which opened in Vinohrady in 1999) was quickly followed by sister restaurants in Plzeň and Liberec. And over the past couple of years, new Husas have been appearing in cities across the Czech Republic with terrifying speed.

A well-run franchise operation guarantees its customers a certain level of consistency from location to location. A Big Mac is going to taste the same whether you're in Brno or San Francisco – in theory, anyway. Fast food lovers like to debate which parts of the world have the best-tasting McDonald's food (Asia, I've heard) and the worst (definitely America, at least in my limited experience).

It's a similar story with Potrefená Husa. Some Husas are better than others. And not all of the individual restaurants manage to keep up the level of quality their corporate overlords expect.

The recently-opened Husa on Platnéřská, for example, seems to have a higher standard of food service than most of its counterparts. Unfortunately, it lacks the atmosphere of the nearby branch on Bílkova – which, after an apparent change in management, has lately become home to some incompetent and surly staff. And unlike at McDonald's, the burger present on most (if not all) Husa menus is completely different from location to location.

So where does the latest incarnation of this Czech pub chain stand among its counterparts? For now, at least, I'd say it's somewhere near the top of the pack.

The Husa I'm referring to is on the corner of Hybernská and Dlážděná, just adjacent to the Masarykovo train station at a spot formerly occupied by a very sketchy Chinese bufet. It's the twenty-fifth Husa to date, and also the largest, seating around 200 people on three floors. Huge windows shine plenty of light on the by now familiar style of décor: a long bar at the front, raised wooden tables, and yellow linoleum floors. Upstairs is a kind of mezzanine with comfortable lounge chairs, and the basement houses a cozy beer cellar with room for 100 customers.

As far as I'm concerned, though, this Husa's claim to fame isn't its size, but its service. All of the servers (and there were lots of them – Husas tend to be well-staffed) I encountered during my visits were not only cordial, but downright enthusiastic. They went out of their way to greet us when we entered the restaurant, they moved with a sense of urgency, and they systematically stopped by our table to ask if everything was all right after we had gotten our food. That last gesture is standard practice in American restaurants and one that should be adopted here more often – a quick check-in allows the customer to ask for that missing fork or a second Mattoni or to have their steak thrown back on the grill.

And, crucially, they weren't annoying. We didn't have waiters hovering around our table or filling up my water glass every time I took a sip; they simply went about their business politely and efficiently. Even the waitress who had an "In training" badge pinned to her shirt was better than most servers I've come across lately. I wouldn't mind sending a few managers of high-end Prague restaurants to Potrefená Husa to see how proper staff training is done.

The news isn't all good in the food department: a chicken broth featured overcooked noodles and peas so hard you could break your teeth on them, the svíčková na smetaně's meat was pretty tough to swallow, and the hamburgers come with cucumbers instead of pickles. But as I've found with every Husa I've visited, there are always a couple of gems on the menu. You just need to figure out what they are.

So far, I've managed to unearth a few goodies at the Hybernská location. One of them is the chicken schnitzel with mashed potatoes and cucumber salad (129 CZK) – a simple dish cooked well, with the chicken freshly fried in clean oil and the mash fluffy and rich -- a great comfort food. The koprová omáčka (beef with dill sauce) I tried as a lunch special falls into that category, too. I'd also recommend the beef carpaccio with arugula, capers, olives, and parmesan (179 CZK), and the fresh strawberries marinated in Grand Marnier served with a scoop of creamy chocolate ice cream (89 CZK).

Old-school pub-goers have been known to grumble about the Husification of Czech pubs, and there is something to their complaints. It can be disheartening to see a classic neighborhood watering hole displaced by a corporate franchise outlet that will look and feel just about the same as twenty-four others (and counting).

But there's a plus side to Husa's presence in our restaurant market, too. When the world's first gastropub, The Eagle, was opened in London's Clerkenwell in 1991, its owners expressed a desire to promote good-quality food in places where ordinary people liked to hang out. At that time, English cuisine was widely considered to be inedible. Now, countless gastropubs and a handful of celebrity chefs later, the U.K. is at the forefront of high-end gastronomy.

We won't necessarily see the same kind of phenomenon happening in the Czech Republic, but there are already signs that all those Husas are having an influence. The food at the famed U Zlatého Tygra pub, for example, used to be absolutely inedible. Now, for 85 CZK, they serve some of the best roast beef in town. I can't vouch for the rest of their menu, but still – awesome beer and great beef? I'm not going to argue with that kind of change.

And neither should you.

Potrefená Husa
Dlážděná 1003/7
Praha 1 – Nové Město
map
Open Sun – Thurs 11.00 - 24.00, Fri – Sat 11.00 - 01.00
Tel.: 224 243 631

images: Staropramen.cz, Prague Spoon

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