Restaurant Review: Grosseto

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 03/01/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

It had been a long time since I'd visited Pizzeria Grosseto.

I knew I had blacklisted the place a few years ago, but I couldn't remember why. A rude server, or overcooked pasta, perhaps – one of the usual Czech suspects. With so many bad restaurant experiences under my belt, it can get hard to keep track of what offense happened where.

On a recent Wednesday evening, I passed by Grosseto's original location near Vítězné náměstí. The pizzeria was overflowing with customers, as it has been since the day it opened back in 1996. At that time, the neighborhood had only a few restaurants; now, although Dejvice is still pitifully lacking in dining options compared to Vinohrady or Žižkov, there are plenty of other options. So why does everyone still flock to Grosseto?

For one thing, it's a pizzeria, and everyone likes pizza. And Grosseto really does make good pies; many credit the restaurant with being the first to bring Italian-style pizza to the Czech masses. As the story goes, two Czech would-be restaurant owners, on a visit to the town of Grosseto in Tuscany, approached a pizza chef named Gianfranco Turbanti and asked him to move to Prague. A few weeks later, Mr. Turbanti arrived in Dejvice, son in tow, and set about the laborious task of constructing a wood-burning pizza oven to his very exact specifications.

Before Grosseto, "pizza" largely meant poor-quality dough covered in Eidam, párek, and a ketchup-based sauce. A few real Italian pizzerias, such as Rugantino, were around, but they were largely patronized by expats and tourists, not locals. There were a couple of American-style pizza joints, too: Pizza Hut and New York Pizza, both now defunct, as well as Chicago's Famous Pizza, formerly located in a prime spot on Malé Náměstí but now downgraded to a delivery-only service based out of Pankrác.

True Italian pizza is almost a different dish entirely, and it's the type of pie that has turned out to be most appealing to local tastes – although it, too, varies from region to region and from one pizzeria to the next. Grosseto's crusts are thin but not quite crispy, and have the inimitable smokiness that comes from a good wood-burning oven like Gianfranco's. The selection of toppings is, to my taste, a little heavy on meats, cheeses, and cream (the signature Grosseto pie comes with chicken breast, mozzarella, gorgonzola, and Parmesan) and low on vegetables (they do, however, put arugula on some of their pizzas, as do lots of Italian restaurants nowadays, and they use fresh mushrooms, which many do not). And although their pizza sauce is not very interesting – it tastes as if the tomatoes were taken straight from the can with no added seasoning – the overall quality of the ingredients is good and the pizza is well-made and tasty.

So why is so much of the other food so bad? The pastas were dismal, thanks not to their being overcooked (all of the pasta dishes I tasted were surprisingly al dente), but because they had been boiled in unsalted water. I have written about this particular problems many times before, including, I believe, in my last review of an Italian restaurant. But I will repeat these words again: you must salt the pasta water. Unless a person has cirrhosis of the liver and is following a strict no-sodium diet, there is no reason why any of us should suffer unsalted pasta.

Which I did, when I ate the pappardelle ai funghi porcini (195 CZK) at Grosseto. The tasteless noodles were homemade, at least, but they stuck together in messy clumps; luckily, the unexciting cream sauce contained plenty of porcini mushrooms that partially offset the dish's general blandness. It was a similar story with the spaghetti con aglio, olio e peperoncino (125 CZK), a dish so simple in flavor that it is almost unbearable to eat without salt.

According to the law of inept seasoning, of course, missing salt in one dish must be compensated by too much salt in another. And so it was with Grosseto's terrible tomato soup (48 CZK) and its otherwise good bruschette al pomodoro (69 CZK). The minestrone con verdure (45 CZK), meanwhile, was full of overcooked veggies and too-soft pasta shells; the tiramisu (79 CZK) might have been a winner if the ladyfingers had been soaked in espresso as they should be. Basically, everything other than the pizza was a just a little bit off.

And that included the service. When the waiter brought me the wrong pizza, he argued with me about what I had actually ordered. "You asked for number 27," he insisted. I told him that I had not ordered by number, but by name – I wanted the pizza Parma (185 CZK), which came with tomato sauce, Parma ham, fresh tomatoes and basil, not one with regular ham and a cream sauce. He had obviously guessed at the number and written it down incorrectly. Grudgingly, he took the pizza away, saying the replacement would come in ten or fifteen minutes. It came in 30 minutes, with no apology, long after the rest of my table had finished eating.

Mistakes happen, of course, but when they do, the waiter should be nice about it and try to accommodate the guest as soon as possible. That, however, would have involved him asking the pizza chef to rush the order and therefore acknowledging that he had done something wrong. But admitting to and apologizing for one's mistakes is not, I've noticed, the national forte.

Neither, apparently, is peripheral vision. As I tried to ask for the check, waiter after waiter walked by without a glance in our table's direction, like horses with blinders on. A few meters away, a bored-looking waitress stared off into space as she massaged lotion into her hands. Aha, I thought, so this was why I'd blacklisted Grosseto. Mystery solved.

Now if only they would let me leave.

Pizzeria Grosseto
Jugoslávských partyzánů 8
Prague 6 - Bubeneč
map
Open Mon-Sun 11:30 – 23:00
Tel.: 233 342 694

photographs: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others grosseto.cz

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Restaurant Review: Pizza Nuova

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 19/04/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

After eating dinner at Pizza Nuova, I felt sick to my stomach.

That’s never a good sign for a restaurant. But in this case, my nausea was to be expected. How else could I possibly feel after eating five different kinds of pasta, a few varieties of pizza, some creamy risotto, and a great big slice of tiramisú?

The all-you-can-eat restaurant concept is one of America’s less appetizing exports. It involves paying a set price to eat as much greasy food as you can until you either vomit or surrender. In the U.S., there’s usually a big hot and cold buffet so that you can serve yourself exactly what you want in whatever massive quantities you require.

When they opened Pizza Nuova, the Ambiente Restaurant Group decided to do all-you-can-eat a bit differently. Individual dishes can be ordered off the menu as in a normal restaurant. And, other than the antipasti bar, there are no buffets; waiters come around sporadically with little pizza and pasta pans to serve you themselves.

The problem with this modified system is that you don’t always get to decide what you eat. Each dish is brought out one at a time, and there’s no way of knowing which foods will be offered to your table later. Should I have this spinach gnocchi? What if I’m too full to eat the spaghetti Bolognese? Apparently, you are free to tell the waiters what kind of dish you would like them to bring next, but because this wasn’t made clear anywhere in the restaurant, I didn’t get a chance to try it out for myself.

Of course, you don’t have to finish what they give you; I ate only a few bites of most of the foods I sampled. By the end of the meal, I was stuck with a nasty-looking plate covered in stale lasagna and half-finished pizza crusts.

I had lots left over not only because I’d wanted to taste as many different dishes as I could, but because the food just wasn’t very good. Almost every dish was too salty. The penne all’ arrabbiata tasted of little besides garlic. Some of the pastas were on the dry side, as if they had been waiting too long to be served, while others seemed unnecessarily rich and creamy. Made with imported fresh mozzarella and baked in a wood-burning oven, Nuova’s pizzas aren’t too far from the Neapolitan pies that Ambiente claims to emulate. But even these weren’t exactly right – their pizza crust was very doughy, almost to the point of sogginess, and the tomato sauce was marrd by too much salt.

There are some rare moments of excellence here, as in the case of a porcini mushroom risotto made with Arborio rice and cooked perfectly al dente, or a tiramisú that’s just as creamy and espresso-soaked as it should be. Still, there aren’t enough highlights to really make the place worthwhile.

Pizza Nuova seems like a great deal: all-you-can-eat pizza and pasta for 328 CZK (or 295 CZK before 18:00) and unlimited access to the antipasti bar for 275 CZK, with the pizza / pasta / antipasti combo-punch available for 515 CZK (or 475 CZK before 18:00). Tomáš Karpíšek, head of Ambiente, has struck gold yet again – customers have been flocking to Nuova since it first opened, eager to stuff themselves with limitless amounts of Italian-esque grub.

But how much pizza and pasta and marinated eggplant can you really eat? That depends both on your eating capabilities and how long you’re willing to sit in one spot.

Nuova occupies a large 2nd-floor space next to the Kotva department store and across the street from the Palladium shopping mall. Big windows let diners look out onto the hustle and bustle while they eat, and the interior is decked out in inoffensive beige leather and wood paneling, making for a warm, lively atmosphere. There’s even a play corner to keep the kids occupied while their parents are gorging themselves.
But most of the restaurant’s seats are benches that don’t have any back support. The uncomfortable seating arrangement doesn’t seem to be a coincidence; in fact, it appears to be a part of Pizza Nuova’s larger plan, one that makes sure that all-you-can-eat diners don’t eat all that much.

During the three or four dinners I’ve had at Pizza Nuova, I’ve noticed a few suspicious patterns. Waiters seem to bring out the heaviest courses, such as gnocchi, risotto, and white pizza, towards the beginning. Only after you’ve filled up on these leaden treats do they start to come around with lighter (and usually more expensive) fare.

The wait between dishes can be tedious, and once you’ve been eating for a longish period of time, there’s always a conspicuous break in the meal service, a solid ten or fifteen minutes during which no food is brought out at all. As scientists have explained to dieters for years, the brain has a certain lag time when it comes to realizing that the stomach is full. So when the waiters come back after the pause with a pan full of four-cheese gnocchi, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that you suddenly don’t feel so hungry anymore.
And then there’s the aforementioned liberal use of salt, which serves the dual purpose of filling up the stomach and encouraging the ordering of additional beverages (incidentally, a friend told me the other day that he “almost died of salt poisoning” after eating at Restaurante Brasileiro, the all-you-can-eat Brazilian version of Pizza Nuova).

If all this seems a little paranoid, it shouldn’t. The Ambiente restaurant chain owes its success to the shrewd decision-making of some very good businesspeople; for better or worse, as with all good franchises, very little goes unplanned.

So while the service at Pizza Nuova is usually friendly and polite, I can’t help but feel that they’re trying to cheat me a little bit. That might be all right if the food was somehow exceptional, but it really isn’t. It’s not good enough to make me want to go there and order a plate of pasta or a pizza off the menu, and it certainly isn’t good enough to pay extra for all the different variations to converge in my stomach and meld themselves into a big, salty, carbohydrate cream-ball.

Just the idea, in fact, is making me feel a little bit ill.

Pizza Nuova
Revoluční 1/655
Praha 1
map
Tel.: +420 221 803 308
Open Mon - Sun 11:30 – 23:30

images: www.ambi.cz

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Restaurant Review: Aldente / Alforno

When an Italian restaurant decides to call itself "Aldente," it's probably not unreasonable to expect its pasta to be served, well, al dente.

But the tagliatelle (180 CZK) I ordered at the Aldente trattoria in Old Town one evening had definitely been in the pot for too long. The zucchini in the accompanying sauce were even mushier, their pulp greyish from overcooking. The saffron promised on the menu was indiscernable, and a few chunks of bacon fat didn't do much to help the dish's general blandness.

Another trip showed the tagliatelle in much better form, cooked perfectly al dente, smothered in a juicy fresh tomato sauce and sprinkled with salted ricotta cheese (180 CZK).

Owned and run by Italian expatriates, this is a cosy, pleasantly kitschy neighborhood joint. The larger half of the restaurant, Aldente, serves pasta and meat dishes; its adjoining side, Alforno, does pizza. Both are warm and well-lit, the yellow walls and red and white checked tablecloths creating a homey Italian atmosphere.
But it doesn't take many visits to figure out that Aldente, for all its singsong service and cutesy charm, is frustratingly inconsistent. Pizza could be ordered in the Aldente side one week, but not the next. A plate of lamb chops (380 CZK) was tender and tasty on first try, but fatty and unappetizing the second time around. Pasta dishes were made either carefully or carelessly, depending on your luck.

Then there's the fact that the lamb was accompanied only by a large lettuce leaf and some sliced raw tomatoes on the first visit; the next tasting saw the addition of a few extremely greasy slices of potato. There's nothing wrong with uncomplicated food, but this just feels lazy.

And that's really too bad, especially when some of the dishes here are truly impressive. The fried zucchini flowers (180 CZK) were doughy, crisp, and mildly sweet, and the desserts (120 CZK apiece), including an espresso-drenched tiramisú and a fragrant amaretto cake, are simple and delicious.

The pizzas are good, too: I sampled a vegetarian version (130 CZK) that came laden with chopped zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, and mozzarella. Its thin crust was nice and crisp, though I missed the earthy flavor characteristic to pizzas made in a wood-fired oven (Alforno doesn't have one).

So are these Italian conjoined-twin restaurants worth visiting? I'm not sure. The atmosphere, particularly in the Aldente half, is great. The service seems very decent -- until you take a closer look at your bill. Dishes and drinks aren't specifically itemized, so it can be hard to tell whether or not they've tacked anything extra on to your order.

On two of my visits, I had a mysterious charge on the receipt, labeled "ostatní" ("other"), that couldn't be accounted for. Together, they added up to 250 CZK. I've heard other diners make similar complaints, so I feel pretty safe in assuming that overcharging is done systematically at Aldente (they also charge a couvert of 45 CZK per person, so that free glass of prosecco they give you at the beginning isn't so free after all).

How stupid of them. I was just about to recommend that you risk the chance of overcooked pasta and bad cuts of lamb for the sake of the authentic Italian atmosphere. But if authentic Italian means cheating the customer, I don't want to have anything to do with Aldente.

And neither should you.

Aldente Trattoria Italiana / Alforno Pizzeria
Vězeňská 4
Prague 1 - Old Town
Tel: 222 313 185
map

images: aldentetrattoria.cz, praguespoon.com

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