Restaurant Review: Le Terroir

I'm being watched. Somebody is creeping up behind me, and although I can't see or hear him, my whole body has stiffened in anticipation. I try to relax – maybe I'm just being paranoid. Maybe the feeling will pass.

It doesn't. From over my left shoulder, a hand appears, brandishing a bottle of wine. My glass is filled. The hand leaves. No more than thirty seconds later, I get that same feeling again. Another hand comes into view, wearing a white glove this time, and sets down a fresh set of cutlery. A minute later, a third person is adding a splash of Vittel to our water glasses.

The next time I sense someone approaching, I turn around. It is another waiter, but he has apparently decided there isn't much left for him to do. He turns our water bottles so the labels are facing outwards, gives us a long look, and exits.

By this point, I've given up on trying to have any sort of meaningful conversation with my date; the parade of unnecessary intrusions has been going on since we first sat down. Because we would prefer not to be overheard by the wait staff, we've stopped talking whenever they've come by.

There was a time when hovering service was expected of a fancy restaurant – if you didn't have the waiter's armpit in your face for most of the evening, you weren't getting your money's worth. But times have changed, and Le Terroir doesn't seem to have gotten the memo. Have they been living in a cave for the past ten years?

Well, sort of, yes. Le Terroir is one of those below-ground restaurants with lots of bricked arches and no windows, another concept that was appealing at a certain point in history but now feels heavily outdated.

But an underground restaurant still has its cozy charms, and its advantages, too; at Le Terroir, a portion of the cellar is dedicated to its vast wine selection, and patrons can, through a glass door, glimpse the stacks of crates and bottles as they are shown to their seats. Wine is important here, as is implied by the name (there are even soil samples of various terroirs – the environment in which a wine is produced – laid into a section of the restaurant's floor). The list itself is a pretty hefty tome, with a wide spectrum of bottles ranging from the under-1000 CZK mark to a justifiably pricey 1949 Latour. For those intimidated by the amount of choice, the sommelier's selection at the front of the menu is a helpful place to start.

Considering the obvious care that has been put into the wines, it was a bit strange to be asked which bottle we wanted before we'd even had a chance to look at the dinner menu. Surely it was understood that we wanted to choose our wine according to our meal? The sommelier didn't seem to get it, though; when we said we'd like to see our food options first, he looked mildly bewildered.

As it turned out, we wouldn't just see our food options: we would hear them, too. Someone at Le Terroir has decided that it would be classy for the servers to spout off, from memory, the evening's offerings – exactly as they are written in the menu that they have just handed their guests.
This kind of thing works in a place where the waiters know the menu so well that they can rattle it off without a second's thought, and add some informative details along the way, but this was nothing short of torture. I felt like I was back in school, watching a completely unprepared student stumble her way through an oral exam. It didn't help, of course, that our poor waitress had to deliver the speech in English, blushing and stammering and awkwardly-pausing her way through a ten-course degustation menu. It was all I could do not to mouth her the answers: "scallops with… SAFFRON CONSOMME."

For all the cluelessness of the wait staff, the food mostly isn't bad. Chef Jan Punčochář prides himself on using high-quality ingredients. His concise menu changes often; the restaurant is even closed on Sundays and Mondays, when it's hard to find fresh produce. The style is French, and even if you don't order a degustation menu (ranging from 1190 CZK for three courses to 1690 CZK for six courses), you will still be pampered with various amuses-bouche between dishes.

My favorite amuse was a piece of crayfish served alongside a fennel salad and slices of orange – perfectly seasoned, simple, and light. I was less keen on the guinea fowl wrapped in bacon and topped with mashed potatoes; although it was good, it was very large, almost enough to be its own course.

My wild duck appetizer (450 CZK), too, was a hefty portion, one I could easily have handled as an entrée. But the seared pieces of duck breast were pleasantly gamey, and were well-complemented by the cubes of fresh pumpkin and spinach leaves served on the side. I quite liked my main course, too, a baked shoulder of wild pig served with chestnuts and Brussels sprouts (640 CZK).

Unfortunately, dessert – a chocolate and quark terrine with strawberry granité – was on the bland side, and my companion's fish of the day (890 CZK) was completely off. The turbot was fairly dry, and served (inexplicably) with pasta and some calamari that were well past their prime. The whole dish was so fishy, in fact, that we could smell it long before it reached our table.

We'd had about 8,000 close encounters with our waiters that evening, but at the end of the meal, there was no one to bring us our check. By the time we left, I was so exhausted that I couldn't even make a snide remark to my friend about the 265 CZK water bottle that appeared on the bill, or the fact that our coats hadn't been hung up on hangers even though there were plenty of empty ones to use. "Let's just get out of here," I said.

So we did.

Le Terroir
Vejvodova 1
Praha 1
map
Tel.: 222 220 260
Open Tues-Sat 11:00-23:00

photographs 2, 3, 5, 6 Ondřej Němec for Lidové Noviny; all others leterroir.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 12/19/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: Století

Století is apparently a very popular restaurant. I discovered this as I was doing my research before writing this article: rave reviews were all over the internet, both from local critics and on tourist-oriented websites. On one of the most well-known travel sites, tripadvisor.com, Století ranks among the top restaurants in Prague, and reservations are a must on more or less any day of the week.

So, once again, I'm probably going to upset a few people. What is so great about Století? I just don't get it.

The restaurant is very reasonably priced, especially considering its location in Old Town, and its owner, Antonin Kinský (also the proprietor of Bar Bar, a pancake house across the river), has created a cozy little space. The brightly-lit front room has a small bar and a fireplace, atop which are various knickknacks. The more spacious back seating area is dominated by a black iron serpent hanging from the arched ceiling. Sketches of old building are framed on the walls, and (fake) potted plants sit on the window ledges. In the summer, there's outdoor seating with a view of the 11th-century Rotunda sv. Kříže (Rotunda of the Holy Rood) across the street. The overall effect is sort of rustic and homey.

You wouldn't be able to guess Století's theme from the interior design, but one look at the menu should clear that up instantly. Each of the dishes is named after a different notable person (usually some sort of artist) of the last century. There are dishes ascribed to Louis Armstrong and Fernand Léger. Ema Destinnová has a salad, and Agatha Christie her very own dessert.

It's actually a pretty charming concept. The only problem is that the famous people have little or nothing to do with their respective dishes. What does Lilli Palmer, the German actress, have in common with curried pork medallions and porcini mushrooms? Would her colleague, the American silent film star Gloria Swanson, really have tucked in to a hearty dinner of cheese nuggets in African tomato sauce?

It's not that the anachronisms matter so much, really. The idea just would have been more effective if the each celebrity were paired up with a classic dish from his or her era and geographical location. Gustav Klimt could have had something nice from Austro-Hungary, like a Tafelspitz or whatever. I don't know.

But that wouldn't correspond too well with Století's cooking style. Its website professes its cuisine to be "authentic Czech food in an international style." As far as I could tell, however, there's nothing "authentic Czech" or particularly "international" about it. The food is pretty much just a whole bunch of made-up nonsense.

I have nothing against a little culinary innovation, of course. But there are times when, no matter how good the intention behind the idea, certain pairings are just fundamentally wrong. Vegetable salad with frankfurters, for example. Or turkey breast stuffed with bryndza (sheep cheese) and sour cream. Even without having tasted these creations, I can say with a fair amount of confidence that they're probably pretty gross.

I can also make that judgment based on the dishes I did eat at Století, which were also based on some bizarre combinations. The "Lola Montez," or stuffed avocado with tomato escabache (98 CZK), sounded decent in theory. But the tomatoes had been folded into a cheese-based sauce – a drippier version of the bryndzová pomazánka (sheep cheese spread) you'd get at the deli – that didn't go well with the avocado at all. And the avocado was too unripe to be very flavorful. (As an aside, I'm not sure why the tomato mixture was called an "escabache"; that term usually refers to a Spanish-style marinated fish).

The dish's one redeeming quality was the accompanying green salad, a mesclun mix that was obviously very fresh. The same lettuce came with the Ema Destinnová salad (139 CZK), a completely random combo that included duck liver, pieces of toast, roasted apples, tomatoes, black and green olives, corn, peas, and whatever else they could find lurking in the back of the vegetable cooler. If I have to tell you why all those ingredients together (particularly the apples and tomatoes and olives) are a bad idea, then maybe you should earmark Století for your next evening on the town. You might actually like the place.

What I found most frustrating about Století were the occasional glimpses of good cooking – ruined, inevitably, by another strange concoction. The William Somerset Maugham (218 CZK) was a tender, well-seasoned piece of rump steak, covered in a creamy black peppercorn sauce. Sounds pretty good, right? It would have been if it wasn't for the bananas. Yup, that's right: bananas. On a steak. With pepper sauce. That's all I need to say about that dish, I think.

But W. Somerset Maugham was downright classic compared to Století's pièce de résistance, the Erich von Stroheim (139 CZK). I'm sure you're familiar with the sweet chili sauce that every Thai restaurant serves with spring rolls and shrimp chips. It comes from a bottle, which is why it always tastes the same. That's also how I knew that the sauce atop poor Mr. Stroheim's chicken breast, served with a couple slices of cooked pear, was from the bottle, too. Besides the fact that the flavor profile is heinous, it is also an incredibly lazy piece of cooking: grill chicken, dump pre-packaged Asian condiment on top, and serve. They didn't even bother to heat the sauce, even though it was so cold it had probably come from the fridge. Yuck.

The food is really a shame, because the ambiance at Století is very pleasant, and the service is good. Still, I would never consider it to be one of the top restaurants in town, even in its price range. But what do I know? The masses, after all, seem to think otherwise.

Století
Karolíny Světlé 21
Praha 1 - Staré Město
map
Tel: 222 220 008

Open Mon-Sun 12:00 - 24:00

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

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

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Restaurant Review: Lokál

The newest, best, most must-visit restaurant in the country doesn't have a celebrity chef. It doesn't have white tablecloths, amuses-bouche, or a sommelier. Instead of soufflés, there's smažený sýr (fried cheese); tlačenka (head cheese) takes the place of truffles.

This is Lokál, and it's the restaurant we've all been waiting for.

I probably don't have to tell you how miserable most Czech pub food is these days. The average inexpensive svíčková (beef in cream sauce) goes something like this: a rock-hard, dry piece of beef, smothered in a watery brown sauce, with a few stale knedlíky (bread dumplings) on the side. No wonder so many foreign visitors shudder at the memory of Czech food.

Those of us who didn't grow up weaned on the Maggi bottle, whose mothers and grandmothers cooked their national dishes with pride, know a different kind of local cuisine – one that lives on in our kitchens at home, but has all but disappeared from pubs and restaurants. Until now, anyway.

A plate of svíčková at Lokál costs 115 CZK, plus 28 CZK for the dumplings (all sides are served separately). For 100g of meat, it's more than you'd pay in most pubs, but the difference is startling. The beef was so tender it pulled apart easily under my fork. The dumplings were light and fluffy. And the sauce, tasting strongly of freshly pureed vegetables, was bright yellow and richly sweet. The dish was served with the traditional topping of whipped cream, cranberries, and a slice of lemon.

Tradition is a priority for Lokál, along with freshness, authenticity, and honesty. The inscription of the bottom of their (daily changing) menu explains their ideology best: "We want to cook Czech dishes differently than most pubs - places where hard work and fresh food are replaced with spices, flavorings, fats, ingredients that 'last forever,' and other cheap tricks used to make cooking faster, cheaper, and easier." What took them so long?

Lokál is the brainchild of Tomáš Karpíšek, the founder of the Ambiente Group and the Czech restaurant market's most brilliant innovator. He's achieved success with his chains of pasta restaurants (Pastacaffe, Ristorante Pasta Fresca) and all-you-can-eat gorgefests (Ambiente Brasileiro, Pizza Nuova). He's promoted Czech food before, too, with the First Republic-inspired Café Savoy and the upscale gourmet favorite La Degustation Boheme Bourgeoise. But Lokál is set to be his biggest, most revolutionary, most important venture yet.

Housed in a massive space off of Dlouhá formerly occupied by Middle Eastern hideaway Dahab (since relocated to nearby Soukenická), Lokál is said to be the longest restaurant in Prague. It has been, despite its size, rammed to the rafters from the day it opened. That's no surprise, really. When was the last time anybody saw rýžový nákyp (Czech rice pudding) on a menu? Or šunkofleky (pasta with smoked ham)? Or škubánky s mákem (sweet noodles with poppy seeds)? Even if you've come across those long-neglected classics once in a while, I guarantee they've never been made this well.

There isn't much to describe about Lokál's food. The plates are kept clean, with garnishes and other unnecessary flourishes kept to a minimum. No wilted oblohy (garnishes) here – just simple, straightforward dishes. My plněný paprikový lusk (stuffed pepper) (99 CZK) was filled with a mix of lean ground beef and marjoram in a sweet tomato sauce. The tatarák (beef tartare) (178 CZK) was made with similarly high-quality meat, pre-mixed to tender perfection, and served alongside crispy topinky(fried toast) and raw cloves of garlic.

That may sound close to what you'd order in any pub, and it is. The difference is in the consistent freshness and quality of Lokál's ingredients – and in the little details, like the homemade, hand-cut noodles in the chicken noodle soup (38 CZK for a pleasantly large portion), or the fresh whipped cream decorating the rakvičky (little meringue "coffins") (28 CZK). Renowned regional companies provide much of the ingredients, and the hotové jídla (pre-prepared dishes) are made from scratch several times a day.

The simplicity of Lokál's food is reflected in its interior, which, with its stark lighting and long wooden benches, brings to mind a school cafeteria. The only decoration, appropriately enough, are childlike doodles made along the length of the wood-panelled walls, illuminated from behind to create a glowing modern display.

For a Prague 1 restaurant, Lokál is refreshingly and unapologetically Czech: there are no menus in English (or French, or German, or Russian), and there are no conciliatory dishes of spaghetti or hamburgers. All of the drinks, from the tea (black, fruit, or rosehip only) to the hard liquor (Tuzemský Rum, Pražská Vodka, Lokál's own slivovice) to the soft drinks (Kofola, homemade sodas) are from these parts. And the beer (36 CZK for 0.5l) is fantastic: ice-cold Prazdroj, tapped fresh from small tanks, and also available as "Šnit" (a mini beer, to be consumed in one or two gulps) or "Mlíko" (only foam).

The only detail that seemed a little off were the coasters – they were the regular green Pilsner Urquell kind. Shouldn't a Czech restaurant this concerned with tradition have its own coasters, emblazoned with its own logo, as all the pubs used to have in the old days?

I guess I can forgive Lokál that one oversight. They are, after all, the restaurant (and future chain of restaurants) that is single-handedly saving good Czech pub food from near-certain extinction. You might think I'm exaggerating, but try it for yourself. If you don't like it, they'll bring you Maggi to make your meal taste more familiar, and your waiter won't even give you a dirty look: the service is more traditional Ambiente than traditional Czech, and thank God for that.

As for me – and again, no exaggeration – Lokál is the only restaurant that I feel like visiting at the moment. Everyone else peddling Czech food in this country should pay attention – because only now, after so many years of greasy goulashes and salty soups and freezer-burnt knedlíky, is somebody finally doing it right.

Lokál
Dlouhá 33
Praha 1 - Old Town
map
Tel: 222 316 265

Open Mon-Fri 11:00-01:00, Sat 12:00-01:00, Sun 12:00-22:00

photographs 1, 2, 4, 5, 6 Tomáš Krist for Lidové noviny; all others ambi.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 05/12/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: Hard Rock Café

Prague's Hard Rock Café may have opened just this year, but the American rock 'n' roll-themed restaurant chain had already had a presence here since the early 1990s. That's when tourist-oriented vendors began selling (next to those ubiquitous "Prague: Czech It Out" shirts) Hard Rock Café Prague T-shirts. The joke, of course, as that there was no Hard Rock Café, but that didn't prevent burger-craving tourists from pestering locals about where the Prague branch actually was.


Now, when a group of foreign teenagers asks me where the Hard Rock Café is (a surprisingly frequent request, surpassed only by inquiries about the metro, "The Clock," and – God only knows why – the Wax Museum), there's actually a direction in which I can point them. The Prague Hard Rock Café is located conveniently close to The Clock, on Malé Náměstí.

I can't be the only person who's walked past the new Hard Rock Café and felt a pang of nostalgia. For 150 years, the Dům U Rotta was home to one of the most well-known Czech department stores, a three-story family-owned hardware emporium that was famous for selling just about everything. In the height of the store's success in the 1930s, it carried 70,000 varieties of metal goods, along with electronic appliances, building materials, hockey equipment, and fishing gear. The interior was notable for its light-filled atrium, crowned by a glass and cement cupola – the first of its kind in Czechoslovakia.

The Rott building now has another, more dubious, achievement to add to its list: at 1900 square meters, it houses the largest Hard Rock Café in Europe. The décor is predictably rock-oriented, with rows of glass cases holding the memorabilia the Café is famous for – Bob Dylan's guitar and setlist, for example, or Jimi Hendrix's fringed leather vest, or (not as exciting) a hat and tambourine from local group Žlutý Pes. There are American-style booth seats and flat-screen televisions playing rock music videos, and in the middle of the famous atrium hangs a custom-made 5-meter-long crystal chandelier in the shape of an electric guitar, which sounds ghastly but is actually quite beautiful.

The energy at Hard Rock is kind of frenetic: the music is loud (deafeningly so when there's a live band playing), there are usually lots of customers, and the waiters rush around trying to keep everybody happy. I'm not sure exactly which drug they're giving the servers, by the way, but whatever it is, it seems to be working. Everyone is all smiles, all the time. The joy actually seems to be genuine; on my last visit, I saw a waitress, milkshake in hand, bounce her way down the steps, a big smile on her face as she danced to the thumping rock music.

That sort of thing may be bizarre for Prague, but it's normal for the Hard Rock Café, which prides itself on having replicated the very same menu, style of décor, and standard of service in 140 locations in 36 countries. The food is exactly what you'd expect of an American rock 'n' roll chain restaurant, which is to say it's low on greens and heavy on grease.

In short, don't come here if you're on a diet. You could always order the h
honey citrus grilled chicken salad (290 CZK), of course, but even that lone sort of low-fat dish on the menu comes with blue cheese on top – and besides, you wouldn't get to taste what Hard Rock is all about. The best way to accomplish that is to order the Jumbo Combo (420 CZK), which combines all of the appetizers onto one plate along with various sauces. There are deep-fried chicken tenders with a honey mustard sauce (good, crispy), potato skins with sour cream (dry and flavorless), chicken wings in a spicy "heavy metal" sauce and a blue cheese dip (nice and meaty), onion rings with barbecue sauce (huge), and Mexican-style spring rolls filled with spinach (totally gross). It's like the deep fryer's greatest hits, if you'll forgive the rock-themed pun.

I've written about the Hard Rock Café burger before, and it really is excellent, with ten different varieties and all the proper fixings. But on this visit, I decided to have something new. I went for the hickory-smoked barbecue ribs (390 CZK): 650 grams worth, served whole on the rack with a special knife for separating the ribs so you can pick them up with your fingers and suck off the meat. These were probably the best ribs I've had in Prague (if you don't count the ones made by my friend Steve from Alabama, which are unbeatable). The meat was tender and fell right off the bone, and had a nice smoky flavor. They were served with cole slaw and French fries, along with a side of ranch beans that were, unfortunately, cold.

I could have used an extra napkin or three after those ribs to wipe down my fingers – and my shirt, which had gotten splattered with barbecue sauce during the process. We'd gotten some wet napkins to go with our Jumbo Combo, but now there weren't any to be found, and I hadn't gotten a plate for my rib bones, either. On previous visits, I had found the service at Hard Rock to be stellar, but there were all kinds of problems now: we also waited ages for them to take our plates away, and they didn’t wipe down our table when it was covered in sauce and crumbs.

At least our waiter was super friendly. And besides, if you have a complaint about the service, you can go online to fill out a survey after your meal and get $5 off your next visit. How very American – and appropriately so.

Hard Rock Café
Dům U Rotta
Malé Náměstí 3
Praha 1 - Old Town
map
Tel.: 224 229 529

Open Mon-Sun 11:30AM - 01:00AM

photographs 1, 4, 5, 6 Jindřich Mynařík for Lidové noviny; all others hardrock.com

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 14/11/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: Maitrea

There are no right angles at Maitrea. The solid-wood tables and chairs all have rounded edges, the doorways are arched, and the lamps are elongated and ethereal, like jellyfish in mid-swim. Even the point where the walls meet the ceiling has been softened with a tube-like rim and a neat row of colored stones.

Maitrea happens to be a vegetarian restaurant, but it is, first and foremost, beautiful. This has to be emphasized, because when a lot of people (myself included) think of vegetarian restaurants, we conjure up images of either unembellished, harshly lit cafeteria-style eateries or the kind of place where hippies sit on grotty carpets with their dogs and talk about marijuana marches.

Neither of these categories applies to Maitrea, which is creative but uncluttered, cozy but not dirty. It's actually spotlessly clean and, it has to be said, expensive-looking. All of the details – the sculptural fountains and custom-made furniture and mosaic tiles – couldn't have been cheap to put together.

And it didn't come quickly, either. The reconstruction of the restaurant and the building in which it is located was done in accordance with feng shui principles and took nearly three years to complete. The whole of the building is called Maitrea, too (a Sanskrit term that can be translated as "loving kindness") and is referred to by its proprietors as a "house of personal development." It hosts tons of vaguely Buddhistic gatherings: meditation seminars, spiritually-oriented lectures, and free-form dance classes. So it only seems appropriate to have a vegetarian-friendly eatery on the premises.

The Maitrea restaurant is run by Václav Stanislav and Martin Dobeš, who founded the veg hideaway Lehká Hlava three years ago. For fans of the original restaurant – which is fully booked on most evenings – the opening of Maitrea just off Old Town Square comes as a welcome expansion. The new place has two floors and seats ninety people, almost double the capacity of Lehká Hlava. Its upstairs space is airy, with high ceilings and large windows; the downstairs section is more intimate and features a couple of couches on a raised platform next to a modern-style fireplace.

Maitrea's menu is similar to that of its sister restaurant: a jumble of veggie-only dishes, from pasta and stir-fries to burgers and burritos. There's even a Czech option, a version of vepřo knedlo zelo (pork with dumplings and sauerkraut) – dumplings with sauerkraut and tofu pork. Sounds fascinating, but somehow I haven't felt the urge to try it.

I'm not crazy about meat substitutions, all those seitans and soy bacons; I generally find them weird and not particularly tasty. I'd rather just have a bunch of vegetables, with some beans or something to make up for the lack of protein. So I'm not sure why I ordered an okara burger (125 CZK), really (okara is a type of soybean pulp common in traditional Asian cooking). For a regular eater of real cow burgers like me, I could have expected that the non-cow version wasn't going to impress me much.

But for a veggie burger, it wasn't too bad. The bun was homemade, fluffy and dotted with sesame seeds. The toppings were decent – a nice slice of tomato, crunchy lettuce, and a garlic yogurt sauce. Turns out (surprise, surprise) it was the soy part that bothered me most. The patty was fried to crispiness on the outside, but kind of runny on the inside, like mashed potatoes that have too much cream in them. Coupled with the drippy yogurt sauce, the patty made the burger incredibly messy to eat. It actually did taste good, but because most of the dish was running down my arms and dropping onto my plate, I had to put it down pretty quickly.

The Mexican dishes seem to be better. I had a red bean chili (130 CZK) that came wrapped up with cheddar cheese in a cone-shaped tortilla. This wasn't especially authentic Mexican food – the chili was a little too sweet and lacked any sort of spicy seasoning – but it was beautifully presented and made with fresh ingredients. On the side was a scoop each of sour cream and red pepper salsa, along with a leafy mesclun salad. The guacamole (70 CZK) is listed as an appetizer and comes with a homemade brioche, but I ordered it as an accompaniment to my chili. It was tangy and made with real avocados, not from the bottle. Yay!

They're big on the homemade stuff at Maitrea, which is one reason why I like it so much. They have their own fizzy lemonade (mint or ginger flavor, 45 CZK) and bake their own chocolate chip cookies to go with mashed-up strawberries as a dessert (the cookies were a little on the tough side, actually, but you have to appreciate the effort).

Another reason to like the restaurant is that it's super-affordable, especially considering its location. There's nothing nearby like it – well, there is Beas, the vegetarian dhaba around the corner, but since they decided to change their system to self-service, it isn't what it used to be. Maitrea charges a comparable price for a lunch menu, 105 CZK, which includes the soup of the day (on my visit, a simple carrot soup with dill and yogurt) and an entrée (chickpea and peanut "perkelt" with bulghur wheat and rice). If you happen to have devoted your life to the spiritual side of things, you can do one better: monks, ordained clergy members, and "enlightened people" eat at Maitrea for free.

The expressed goal of Maitrea is to be "a pleasant place to meet people who are open to inspiration." I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I do find Maitrea to be a pretty inspiring place. Maybe next time I visit, I'll meet some inspiring people there, too.

Maitrea
Týnská ulička 6
Praha 1 - Old Town
map
Tel: 221 711 631

photographs Tomáš Krist for Lidové noviny; all others restaurace-maitrea.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 07/11/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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Restaurant Review: La Finestra

What happens when I get recognized in a restaurant? Well, the service usually gets better: suddenly, a waiter who's been ignoring me all night is perfectly on point, asking if we need a dash of fresh pepper or a foot massage. That's why I try to avoid getting noticed – otherwise, I would never know how the restaurant is experienced by the average visitor. The review just wouldn't be fair.

Try as I might, recognition sometimes happens. In the case of La Finestra, I was introduced to the manager by my dining companion against my will. I had planned on reviewing it. But as I watched the waiters prance around our table, checking in every three minutes to see if everything was all right, I figured I could never write about the place in an objective way.

The thing was, I really, really liked the meal. I'd been to La Finestra before, and hadn't been recognized, and the food and service were equally as good (if not better, because it hadn't felt oppressively attentive). So I decided to go again.

I have a theory about my appearance: when I don't wear makeup, I look like a slug. I am convinced that for people who are used to only seeing me in my enhanced mollusk-free state, I am impossible to recognize. The first review visit I made to La Finestra, I'd been in a nice dress, had my hair down and powder and lipstick on, and it was nighttime.

So, in the unforgiving glare of daylight, wearing Converse and a sweatshirt and my slug face, my unwashed hair pulled up into a childlike ponytail, no one would know it was me.

No such luck. "Aha! Dobrý den!" shrieked one of the servers as soon as I walked in the door. Damn. This was not only bad for my review, but bad for my reputation – at one point during the meal, the executive chef, Tomáš Černý, came over to say hello, and I was in his restaurant looking like an only slightly rehabilitated hobo.

I'm sharing all this for the purposes of full disclosure, although I know I will get some backlash from my feistier readers: how dare I give full marks to a restaurant that clearly knew who I was and treated me accordingly?

The simple answer is that I liked the place so much that I just couldn't help myself. On top of that, I have become convinced, both through casual observation and by questioning some of my more discerning restaurant-going friends, that all patrons are treated well at La Finestra.

For starters, it's the kind of restaurant where the waiters recognize returning customers. If you've been there before, they offer a friendly smile; they might even shake your hand (and no, not just mine). There are some establishments in this town that I've been going to regularly for years, and they still look through me when I step inside. Not so at La Finestra.

It goes along with the familial atmosphere that co-owner Riccardo Lucque first cultivated at his original restaurant, Aromi, and has perfected here. Eating at La Finestra is a bit like hanging out in your Italian grandmother's kitchen; their aim is to fill you up and make you happy, whatever it takes.

As a result, the options can seem endless. The dishes on the printed menu are just a rough guide – the specials are really where it's at. Servers come around to each table with massive platters of seafood and raw meat, picking each protein up in turn to describe what it is and how it can be cooked (sometimes I find their molestation of the meats to be a little off-putting, but maybe I'm just being prudish). Many of the portions are for two or more people, so you often see tables eating family-style, with a large platter of meat and side dishes in the center of the table and everybody helping themselves.

The chefs at La Finestra pay attention to seasons; on my very first visit there, the menu was laden with asparagus. Now, there were tons of black truffles: freshly shaven over a perfect, creamy risotto (395 CZK for a starter; 445 CZK for a main course); turned into briny truffle water and ladled around a bed of raw scallops (395 CZK); even infused into a rich chocolate cake (165 CZK).

One evening, the kitchen had fresh chanterelles, so the server offered several ways that they could make them. Would I like them on bread, as a kind of bruschetta? As a sauce over pappardelle? Or alongside a nice piece of beef? I went for the last option, a lightly marbled, tender fillet cut, crusty on the outside and red as a plum in the middle. La Finestra imports its beef from Italy, where it is aged for six weeks before being transported to Prague.

They also order a special variety of San Marzano tomatoes, called "La Motticella," a year in advance, then turn them into specialties like the cold tomato soup with burrata cheese (125 CZK) – something like a liquid caprese, sprinkled with croutons and fresh basil and a few drops of red wine vinegar. I would have preferred it to be sweeter, but Chef Černý explained that Mr. Lucque likes the dishes to be more on the vinegary side, since that's the style of his native region of Italy, Le Marche. Nothing, it seems, happens at La Finestra by accident.

And that's exactly the kind of restaurant where you want to spend your money: a place where everything is thought through in advance, where every detail is accounted for. They're going to treat you well, even if you look like a slug or a hobo – and yes, even if you're not a restaurant critic. I feel very confident about that.

La Finestra
Platnéřská 13
Praha 1 – Stare Mesto
map
Tel.: 222 325 325

Open Mon-Sat 12:00-23:00, Sun 12:00-22:00

images 1, 2, 6, 7 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others lafinestra.cz

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 26/09/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

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