Las Adelitas to open restaurant in Vinohrady

Looks like Fosil will no longer be the only authentic Mexican restaurant in town.
The popular Mexican food delivery service Las Adelitas has announced it will open its first restaurant this month. There will be a grand opening party on Friday, October 16th -- but they are also holding a "pre-inauguration" party tonight at 8pm, at the new location on Americká 8 in Vinohrady. Delivery is on hold for now, but will restart as soon as the restaurant officially opens.

Margaritas and flautas... yum.

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Restaurant Review: Kri-Kri

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 23/05/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

I'm sitting in Kri-Kri, a small Greek restaurant in Vinohrady, and my companion and I are very hungry. We've been waiting what feels like forever for our appetizers – dishes that are cold and should already be pre-made, so we can't imagine what the hold-up is. Finally, the server approaches us with three plates. Ah, the relief!

But no. We hadn't ordered the grilled feta cheese or the spinach pie. We watch as the food is redirected to the people sitting next to us, who definitely arrived after we did, because we had almost sat at their table when we first came in.

Our food does come, eventually, after our neighbors have already cleaned their plates. One of our dishes, an eggplant spread (65 CZK), requires pita bread to be eaten, but we had forgotten to order it and weren't asked if we wanted any. We order it now, but it takes so long to arrive that by the time it does, we have finished off the eggplant entirely.

The other table also gets their entrées before we do. As we wait, a waitress comes by and asks if everything is all right. "Yes," my companion says, "but it would be better if we had our food."

"Come on now, we're in Greece!" the waitress laughs. "Everything's chill! You know, one Greek minute." She strolls off, shaking her blond curls as she goes.

Now, I don't know what "one Greek minute" is supposed to mean exactly, but I'm guessing it has something to do with the fact that things move more slowly down in the Mediterranean. So by my estimation, a minute in Greece would translate roughly to a half hour in the Czech Republic. In that case, it took four Greek minutes for us to eat two courses at Kri-Kri. I was not willing to wait around for dessert.

Despite its spaced-out service, Kri-Kri has quickly become a hopping little spot. It helps that the prices are reasonable and the food is mostly decent, and sometimes it is even very good. On a second visit, I fell in love with the shrimp saganaki (105 CZK), which were cooked in a light tomato sauce with feta cheese and green peppers and spiced with a little bit of the quintessential licorice-flavored Greek spirit, Ouzo. I was also pleasantly surprised by the dakos (60 CZK), a very dry, hard bread topped with tomatoes and goat cheese. The tzatziki (60 CZK) was great, too – packed with garlic and made with thick Greek yoghurt.

The server made a fairly big show of the kleftiko (210 CZK), a lamb dish cooked in baking paper with potatoes, vegetables, feta, and spices. In Greek, kleftiko means "stolen meat"; according to legend, the dish was invented by thieves who would steal a lamb from a grazing flock and slow-cook the meat in a hole in the ground, covered up with mud so the smoke wouldn't give them away. When he brought the kleftiko to the table, the waiter loosened the string holding the paper together so that my friend could "smell the aroma of the herbs inside" (this was accompanied by an instructive hand gesture). But for all the hubbub about its scent, the dish inside the paper was disappointingly bland and the lamb was as tough as beef jerky.

My stifado (185 CZK), on the other hand, had a dark, rich tomato sauce, tender morsels of beef, and some sweet pearl onions. It didn't come with a side, but I soaked up the thick stew with some toasted pita bread – which, on this visit, the waiter brought without my even asking for it. This was a really nice dish, especially considering its below-average price tag.

Another entrée, the chicken souvlaki (170 CZK) brought back some pleasant memories of New York City's late-night Greek diners. I often had the dish there as comfort food, and it was served similarly here – with pita bread, French fries, and tzatziki. The meat wasn't exactly bursting with flavor, but it was satisfying enough that I would order it again.

As a reminder of its central theme, Kri-Kri is decorated with various Greek knickknacks, including framed photographs of soaring cliffs and sandy beaches. The tables are made of dark wood, and the paper place mats, napkins, and menus are in bright primary colors, which is nice (though the menu printed in red is very hard to read in the restaurant's dim light, and I failed to understand why there was a pile of crunched-up used place mats displayed in one corner).

The overall mood in Kri-Kri is that of a Mediterranean hospoda, which I guess equates to the traditional Greek taverna; it's a little dark and a little dingy, but it still has a nice warmth. Oh, and the place has one more thing in common with the pub down the street – its toilets, at least when I saw them last, are less than spotless. That never bodes too well for the kitchen's hygiene standards, but sometimes you have to force yourself not to think unsavory thoughts.

It's worth mentioning that the house wine at Kri-Kri is cheap and surprisingly potable. You may end up ordering a lot of it, depending on how long you have to wait for your meal. Or maybe I was just unlucky – on my second visit, things seemed to go a lot more smoothly. Although when I checked my watch as we were leaving, I clocked the same time that I had a few nights before: two hours for two courses.

To me, that seems like a lot. But maybe I should start readjusting myself to run on Greek time. Apparently, the people down there are a lot more relaxed.

Kri-Kri
Korunní 48
Praha 2 – Vinohrady
map
Tel: 222 540 400

photographs: 1, 4, 5 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others kri-kri.cz

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Restaurant Review: L'Ardoise

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 11/04/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

The scallops would have been perfect if they weren't gritty.

They were part of an unusual dish: seared scallops with galettes and poached pears (360 CZK). A galette is a savory buckwheat pancake native to Brittany, and its grainy texture was a nice contrast with the slippery smoothness of the scallop meat.

In theory, anyway. These mollusks hadn't been properly rinsed, so they tasted like they had been battered in sand – not my favorite method of scallop preparation. It was really a shame, because without the grit, the dish would have been memorably tasty (by the way, check out La Crêperie in Holešovice if you want to try inexpensive galettes made in the more traditional way).

L'Ardoise is owned by a Frenchman named Alexandre Déon – son of well-known writer Michel Déon – who settled in Prague after meeting his wife on a local film set (Déon's other career is in the movie industry). The small Vinohrady restaurant, first opened in September of 2006, has recently reopened after a brief hiatus.

I never visited L'Ardoise before its closure, so I don't know if there have been any major changes in the interim. But what greeted me when I first came in was a pleasantly-lit corner restaurant, decorated with beige leather banquettes, white tablecloths, and colorful paintings by Italian artist Franco Hüller. There were also a few shelves of antique Czech toys – cars, puppets, and dollhouse furniture.

The welcome was pleasant, too; a friendly waiter took our coats and asked which section we would prefer. Since the restaurant was more or less empty, we had our pick: smoking or non. Since I always prefer non-smoking, that's where we went. On my first visit, there was no problem, but on my second, the non-smoking area was distinctly, well… smoky. Not actively smoky, but it smelled as if it had been smoked in recently. During a late-night party, perhaps? Or maybe the fumes had just wafted over from the other side of the restaurant. Oh well. It wasn't too offensive – it just made the air a little stale.

The menu at L'Ardoise is small, and during my dinner visit, there was only one special: some kind of veal liver dish that the server didn't voluntarily describe and seemed a little hesitant about. We didn't order it.

There is a fair amount of veal on the menu, by the way – two of six entrees, which is a little unusual. I ordered the veal cheeks (380 CZK). Veal is the most tender kind of meat, and the cheeks are one of its most delicate muscles, so even if you've never had veal cheeks before, you can imagine just how wonderful they can be. Each morsel of meat flaked off the fork, and the thin ripples of cheek fat added a luscious creaminess to every bite. The cheeks were served in a thick brown gravy and with a small side (a little too small, perhaps) of gratinated potatoes and some mildly sad-looking vegetables.

The same vegetables accompanied my companion's salmon millefeuille (310 CZK) – a dish that came with some tough-looking, almost cookie-like pastries that she didn't like. A different companion made the wrong choice, too, when he opted for a lunch menu (390 CZK for appetizer and main course) featuring some baked gnocchi that were so overcooked they were more like mashed potatoes than pasta. They came in a heavy cream sauce, baked with parmesan. Not much imagination, and not much flavor, either.

The vegetable soup (90 CZK) was very bland too, although I did appreciate the fact that it had just the right amount of creaminess and was sprinkled with some crispy fried onions (the onions were also used in several other dishes I tried). And although it isn't always perfect, the food at L'Ardoise does have a fresh simplicity that I like. They don't do too much to their food; in some cases, they let you play with it instead.

That's how the beef entrecôte (490 CZK) was served – a massive slab of meat with just a little seasoning on it. The beef came with various sides: boiled new potatoes, herb butter, a small dish of sea salt, and two kinds of French mustard. The steak was medium rare, as I had ordered it, but it was cooked unevenly. Some portions of it were dripping with blood, which should never really happen even if the steak was ordered rare.

Even if the previous courses were a little hit or miss, the desserts were a pleasant surprise. A chocolate fondant (160 CZK), dubbed something like "hot chocolate love" by our waiter, was baked to perfection, and the tarte tatin (a traditional French caramelized apple tart) was accompanied by an aromatic scoop of homemade vanilla ice cream. When, on my second visit, my companion and I chose not to order dessert, they brought us something sweet anyway – a spoonful of dark chocolate mousse with a dab of white chocolate mousse and a small homemade cookie. It was just the thing to hit the spot, and to make me want to order a whole portion of mousse on my next visit.

The way I see it, L'Ardoise is a good little neighborhood restaurant with the occasional good dish. It's not really a destination spot, but it's a place you might want to go if you live in the area or happen to be passing by. I can see it being especially attractive in the spring and summertime, when people can sip vintages on their large outdoor terrace. By then, maybe they'll have fixed a few of the kinks in their kitchen.

L'Ardoise
Bruselská 7
Praha 2 - Vinohrady
map
Tel.: 222 524 102

photographs 1, 3, 4 František Vlček for Lidové Noviny; all others ardoise.cz

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Restaurant Review: Masala

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 04/04/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.

It would be easy to confuse Masala with a restaurant in New York or London. That is not to say it possesses any qualities particular to either of those cities – other than the fact that the language spoken there is almost exclusively English.

Masala may be located in the Czech capital, but over the year and a half of its operation, it has cultivated a mostly expatriate clientele. It isn't unusual to hear no Czech spoken at all during a meal there, and while foreigners all seem to be in on the Masala secret, few Czechs appear to know the restaurant even exists at all.

Part of the reason must be that the restaurant's owners – siblings Bobby and Bhavna Jain – speak limited Czech themselves, and so have made a concerted effort to reach out to the many foreigners that live in Masala's immediate area, Vinohrady. Jain is a constant presence on the Expats.cz internet portal, responding to his customers' complaints and questions and announcing new developments.

So far, the hands-on approach seems to have worked; Masala is reliably busy even on weeknights. With a restaurant of only ten or so tables, a full house isn't all that hard to pull off, but the place has a definite buzz. On one of my visits, several groups of hungry customers had to be turned away or told to wait for a table to free up.

I don't know all that much about Indian cuisine, but it doesn't take a ton of expertise to recognize that Masala is one of the best Indian restaurants in the city. There's a lot of love and hard work that's been put into this place, and it shows.

The menu is laid out clearly and beautifully, with each dish explained in mouthwatering detail – helpful for those who are not too familiar with the offerings. Indian-food newbies will also appreciate Masala's flexible approach to their spices; the cooks are happy to adjust the hotness levels according to your taste, from very mild to sweat-inducing.

I asked for a chicken madras (162 CZK) done medium spicy, and it turned out just right (I am still trying to work my tastebuds up to the extreme heat of a real chicken Vindaloo, which is also on the menu). Indian dishes can be hard to pin down – there are no precise recipes, as ingredients vary from one chef to the next – but the hallmarks of a Madras are its red color and a generous amount of chili powder. This one had a sweet, tangy flavor, and the cubes of chicken nestled inside the sauce were amazingly tender.

But the chicken is nothing compared to Masala's consistently soft and juicy lamb meat. I tried it with saagwala (233 CZK), a thick curry made with spinach and fenugreek that was perfect for scooping up with a slice of naan bread (39 CZK). The naan, by the way, is homemade in a special tandoor oven and comes in three varieties: plain, butter, and garlic. The Masala version is a little crispier than other naans I've eaten, but it's still wonderful.

Another highlight was the tandoori chicken appetizer (185 CZK) – a Punjabi dish of chicken marinated in yoghurt, seasoned with a tandoori curry paste, and roasted in the aforementioned clay oven at a very high temperature (when the next table over is presented with a caste-iron dish that sizzles so loudly it interrupts your conversation, the tandoori chicken is probably what they're getting). I also loved the onion bhaji (69 CZK) -- chopped onions deep-fried in chickpea batter and served with a cool mint and yoghurt dipping sauce.

Even when Masala veers a bit from the more classic Indian dishes, they still manage to do very well. A tandoori chicken salad (185 CZK) was a refreshing mix of fresh veggies, chicken, and mint leaves, and a tomato and basil soup (45 CZK) had a mildly Indian accent thanks to the addition of fresh ginger (shredded coconut gave a yellow lentil soup, also 45 CZK, an ingenious boost, too).

Occasionally, the amount of meat tucked away in those pretty copper curry bowls can seem a little skimpy, but when I last visited, I was so full from the appetizers that I had to ask to have most of my main course wrapped up to take home. They are happy to do take-out meals, in case you want to eat your curry at home in front of the TV.

And with Masala's growing popularity, taking the stuff with you could be your only option. You might prefer it anyway, not because the atmosphere is bad – the restaurant is pleasantly decorated, with Indian pillows and tapestries and bright yellow walls – but because the service can be on the slow side. This is not for lack of trying by the friendly and slightly frazzled waitress, but because there is only one of her. Despite its small size, there's a lot to take care of when Masala is full, not least because Indian food demands many dishes and, inevitably, many drinks.

So I waited for a Coke that never came, and had to ask twice for another bottle of water. We also sat for a long time with empty plates in front of us, the remnants of curry sauces crustifying before our eyes. This has happened to me at Masala before on a few occasions. Basically, they could really use another server.

I would also be thrilled if they started tapping their beer – after all, the combination of spicy Indian food and a cold, freshly-tapped Czech beer is almost unbeatable. But as consolation, Masala has a selection of yoghurt lassis that they will make with a double shot of vodka (90 CZK) for those who are inclined to drink the hard stuff.

For now, I'll stick to my favorite beverage, the deliciously spicy Masala tea. I plan on coming back for it soon – and maybe next time, I'll even run into a few Czech speakers there.

Masala
Mánesova 13
Praha 2 - Vinohrady
map
Tel: 222 251 601

photographs 1, 3, 4, 5 Jindřich Mynařík for Lidové Noviny; all others masala.cz

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Restaurant Review: Aromi

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 21/03/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.


It's almost lunchtime, and I'm hungry. So writing about Aromi is about to be a little torturous, especially when I have one particular, magical dish on my mind.

I am an unabashed fan of pasta; most days, I'd take a bowl of good spaghetti over almost anything else. When a restaurant makes its pasta itself, I get pretty jazzed up about it. And right now, I'm very jazzed up about Aromi's ravioli.

For one thing, they are beautiful. My plate, piled up with bright yellow, perfectly round ravioli, looked like it had been covered in little suns. They were firm on the outside and filled with eggplant and burrata, a type of mozzarella that is mixed with cream to produce a luxurious, soft consistency. On top of the ravioli was some butter, fresh basil, and a few slices of peeled raw tomato.

This simple, sophisticated delight cost 345 CZK – a fairly steep price tag for a not-too-large portion of pasta – but I would go back for it anytime. And by anytime, I mean right now, if I didn't have to write this damn article and visit some other restaurant for my next one.

Lots of people come back to Aromi. One friend absolutely swears by it and refuses to take her business contacts anywhere else; other people must feel similarly, since the place is packed nearly every night. When he opened the restaurant nearly four years ago in the buzzing Vinohrady neighborhood, head chef and owner Riccardo Lucque couldn't have hoped for a much warmer reception.

Mr. Lucque hails from the Marche region of Italy, from which he imports many of the ingredients used in his kitchen. Some of these can be found up the street from Aromi in its deli offshoot, Aromi La Bottega. On offer are various prosciuttos and salamis, cheeses, olive oils, wines, and fresh pastas. They will let you sample almost anything you want before you buy it, and even do made-to-order hot sandwiches on Tuscan bread.

The Bottega also sells the same fresh fish available in the restaurant. It is outstanding, and one of the major reasons why Aromi has garnered a lot of attention on the Prague dining circuit. Each day, servers present patrons with a tray full of various piscine delights: sea bass, sea bream, turbot, live lobster, and so on. Most of them are recommended for two or more people, and the staff will suggest methods of preparation for each one – although they are happy to follow your special wishes as well.

On an evening visit, I shared a whole ombrina baked in sea salt (1870 CZK) with two of my companions. A waiter cleaned and portioned the fish at the table, disrobing it of its thick salt crust, removing the skin and bones, and arranging the steaming white meat on three plates. Tableside service is a rarity in this city – perhaps because it demands additional time and skill of the servers and forces the kitchen to be honest about its ingredients. But it's a nice little show for the diners to look at and adds to Aromi's homey atmosphere.

The ombrina itself was moist and stuck slightly to the teeth – the hallmarks of a well-cooked fish (I would suggest eating it without the olive oil offered by the waiter, since its flavor is excellent on its own). Unfortunately, nearly all of the side dishes we'd ordered, including a potato and cauliflower puree (65 CZK), braised artichokes (95 CZK), and lentils with pesto (65 CZK), were only lukewarm.

Other issues crept into the food here and there, too. A blue cheese and beetroot salad (215 CZK) lacked acidity, and a pumpkin risotto with sausage and balsamic vinegar (275 CZK for a starter portion; 335 CZK for a main course) was overly sweet. But the only dish I tried that I thoroughly disliked was the crab salad (365 CZK). It was served in a martini glass (a presentation probably meant to play off the salad's Martini Bianco jelly cubes), which made the salad very difficult to eat without dumping half of it onto the surrounding tabletop. There was fresh crab in mayonnaise, but its pairing with chopped olives, a very oily mesclun salad, and the bits of Martini Jell-O didn't do it any favors. Stick to the simple stuff at Aromi, and you probably won't go wrong.
Unless, of course, you are unlucky and have a bad experience with your server. In general, the service at Aromi is very good, if a little brusque (though I would still much prefer a slightly brusque waiter to one that hovers over the table all evening). But I did recently receive an email from an old friend detailing a very frustrating evening there, and I have been the victim of some inattentiveness at Aromi myself. At the end of a leisurely and expensive meal more recently, our waiter plucked the dessert plates and coffee cups off our table before we were finished in an apparent attempt to rush us out the door.

I did, however, appreciate the fact that Mr. Lucque himself had come over to each table earlier to ask if everything was all right. It's that sort of personal touch that will keep his restaurant full – despite its occasional faults and rather inflated prices.

So what's next for Aromi? Starting in February, they have begun holding monthly four-hour cooking classes, each focusing on a different type of food (sea bass, asparagus, and pasta are some of the selections). And people are already talking about La Finestra, the new restaurant Mr. Lucque plans to open in April on Platneřská in Old Town. That one, he says, will be more meat-oriented, and he will be importing special cuts from Italy.

If Aromi is anything to go by, La Finestra will be a great success, and Mr. Lucque won't need any well-wishers. But I am crossing my fingers for him anyway.

Aromi
Mánesova 78
Praha 2 – Vinohrady
map
Tel: 222 713 222
Open Mon-Sat 12:00-23:00, Sun 12:00-22:00

photographs 1, 2, 3, 5 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others Aromi.cz

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Restaurant Review: Radost FX

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 25/10/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

When winter time comes around, most of us do our best to keep ourselves from getting sick. We wear scarves. We take extra vitamins. We may even go to the doctor's office to get flu vaccinations.

I am just as diligent about avoiding the restaurant at Radost FX. I don't often lie, but when it comes to that particular spot, I am not above fabricating an aunt's 60th birthday party or a sudden attack of the shingles. Believe me, if there was an anti-Radost shot, I'd be the first in line.

But just as some of us will still come down with the flu despite our best efforts, I sometimes end up getting dragged to Radost.

My friends, you see, will not heed the sound advice of the restaurant critic ("That place SUCKS"), because they always have a very special reason to go there. Somebody doesn't eat meat. ("It's not the only vegetarian place in town," I argue.) They serve brunch. ("Are you out of your mind? Have you SEEN the French toast?") It's late and we're hungry. ("Oh… all right." There really isn't anywhere else to have a sit-down meal in this city after midnight.)

The fact that I am something of a food snob is not the only reason I refuse to eat at Radost. I'm also trying to protect my and my friends' health and general well-being.

It could just be hearsay, but Radost's food does have a reputation for making people ill. Besides the various discussions of this topic on the internet, I personally know several people who have gotten sick after eating there. Even just this past week, a friend who accompanied me on one of my visits said she felt not very good at all after eating one of the restaurant's beloved Popeye burgers (the "burger" part is made out of spinach, hazelnuts, garlic, and cheese, in case you were wondering).

Far be it for me to know exactly what's going on. But I would like to point to the eyewitness account of a buddy of mine as a possible (partial) explanation. My friend was at Radost early in the day and saw the chef taking a batch of produce from the delivery man. The chef shook the hand of the delivery dude, brought the veggies into the kitchen (separated from the dining room by only a curtain, so it's possible to glimpse inside), and without washing his hands proceeded to chop up the tomatoes and put them on a plate for a customer's salad. And then, as an afterthought, he grabbed a slice of tomato from the plate and popped it in his mouth.

With standards like these, it's no wonder people are getting sick.

Of course, there are a lot of restaurants in this town with questionable hygiene practices – more, probably, than I'd care to know about. But even if the food at Radost isn't regularly groped by dirty hands, it's still presented as if it was. All of the dishes come out looking carelessly made and sloppy.

Take the Heaven's Garden dish (195 CZK), another supposed favorite of avid Radost-goers. It's basically a plate of mashed potatoes smothered in a dull cream sauce and topped with random vegetables: carrots, zucchini, mushrooms, red and green peppers, parsley, black olives (what?), and sun-dried tomatoes (why?). Some of the carrots were shredded, others were julienned. It's as if they just threw in whatever scraps they had lying around the kitchen.

The ratatouille (190 CZK) may be even worse. When I tried it, the vegetables were inexcusably overcooked, to the point where it was nearly impossible to tell the difference between the eggplant and the zucchini because both were so mushy and brown. The zucchini had been lazily cut into five-centimeter-long cylinders. The couscous that came with the ratatouille was bone dry; it must have been made the day before and stored improperly afterwards. And spooned on top was a nonsensical serving of sour cream. As if that would make this pile of slop worth the money.

I guess laziness rules at Radost. On my first visit, the waitress took a drink order from my friend without asking the rest of us what we wanted, then brought the drink and still didn't ask. On my second visit, my brother, who has a serious peanut allergy, asked a different waitress if there would be peanuts or peanut products in his stir fry. She said she wasn't sure and she would find out. She didn't. My brother got sick.

What more can you expect from a restaurant where my friend (the same unlucky lady who ate the foul Popeye burger) once found a big piece of glass in her salad? That may have been a few years ago, but judging by my recent experiences there, I still wouldn't put that kind of insanity past this place.

What confuses me most is the fact that so many people continue to eat at Radost. Some even swear by it. A Hollywood actor once took me there on a miserable date because he refused to eat anywhere else the whole time he was shooting his movie in Prague. He even had Radost food delivered to the set every day.

Okay, so I guess the interior is kind of cool, with the brightly patterned couches and funky wallpaper and quasi-trendy dance music provided by live DJs on the weekends. The restaurant feels like an extension of the club downstairs – all the more so because of the cigarette smoke and the fact that customers have to use the dank and dirty club toilets.

But even if you're enticed by the shabby chic décor and the promising-looking menu, even if you're a vegetarian and you want brunch or it's late and you're hungry, don't do it. I, for one, plan on never getting dragged to Radost again.

And after this review is published, I won't even have to come up with an excuse.

Radost FX
Bělehradská 120
Praha 2 - Vinohrady
map
Tel: +420 224 254 776

images 1, 4, 5: Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; 3, 7: radostfx.cz; all others: Prague Spoon

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Restaurant Review: Zahrada v Opeře

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 09/08/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

I wasn't expecting much of Zahrada v Opeře.

It might have had something to do with the restaurant's location in the monolithic Radio Free Europe building, wedged in between the State Opera and the National Museum and right in the middle of two of Prague's busiest thoroughfares. To reach it, you have to walk up a dusty sectioned-off part of the street, just alongside the RFE barricades and past a couple of checkpoints and machine-gun-brandishing security men.
The unconventional approach almost makes the moment you finally enter Zahrada v Opeře that much better. The restaurant itself is bright and airy, flanked by enormous windows and decorated in a clean, modern style. Colorful plants hang from partitions between the tables, a pretty stone mosaic covers the bar and part of the floor, and gentle jazz music emanates subtly from the speakers. There couldn't be much more of a contrast.

Zahrada recently acquired a new chef, the well-traveled French native Martial Clement, who has worked in several Michelin-starred kitchens in France and Germany as well as a few restaurants in Prague (most recently the Ada restaurant in Hotel Hoffmeister). Mr. Clement's resume also notes his experience as personal chef to an admiral living on Tahiti – a position that might at least partially explain the Frenchman's evident passion for exotic dishes and unusual flavor pairings.

On one visit, the daily specials included bobotie (135 CZK), a spicy-sweet ground beef dish that hails from South Africa. One of the meals listed as "Your Favorites" is nasi goreng (320 CZK), a typical Indonesian fried rice dish. And even fairly standard menu items are livened up by unusual accompaniments: the carpaccio of tuna (230 CZK), for example, is served with wedges of fresh pink grapefruit and lamb's lettuce in a tasty citrus dressing.

I was a little skeptical when I found out that Zahrada had begun serving sushi along with its other international fare; a lot of restaurants seem to be jumping on the Japanese bandwagon without bothering to make the food properly. Here, though, the sushi is crafted exclusively by Tadayoshi Ebina, a native of Japan with long-term experience as the owner and chef of various sushi restaurants. I ordered the small sushi set (350 CZK) and was presented with a beautiful platter of four elegantly crafted nigiri and three uramaki rolls, as well as two small rolls made with pickled radish and raw vegetables. The fish was expertly sliced and as fresh as could be (there was a little too much wasabi smeared on each piece for my taste, but that's really a matter of personal preference).

Seafood seems to be where Zahrada excels. They offer four different versions of tiger shrimp on their menu, and at least one of them is worth crossing the RFE barriers for: the Colombo-style tiger prawn curry, a big bowl of red curry, coconut milk, bananas, apples, raisins, and almonds (380 CZK). It's a complex and hearty dish, with a sauce so yummy I only wished I'd been given a spoon so I could lap it all up.

Also memorable was the chilled porcini mushroom soup with wild mushroom bruschetta and foie gras crème brûlée (220 CZK). I love a good cold soup, and this was one of the better ones I've tried – icy, smooth, and dense with pureed mushrooms. And in case you were wondering, the foie gras crème brulee was good, too. It arrived in a tiny glass bowl encrusted with burnt sugar and tasted just like a regular crème brulee, but the cream underneath was tinged with the unmistakable buttery flavor of real foie.
The obvious care put into the preparation of each dish makes it easier to forgive the occasional (rare) mistake: an undertoasted, bland piece of bread and melted cheese in the goat cheese salad, for instance, or a chocolate mousse that was too creamy for its own good, or the restaurant's clumsy website. Even the servers seem proud of the food, and why shouldn't they be? No plate leaves the kitchen, it seems, without looking gorgeously appetizing. And then there are the little extras that make a restaurant that much more special, like the raw vegetable crudités and dipping sauce they put out along with the bread at the start of the meal (pictured below) and the pitchers of freshly-squeezed juices lined up at the bar.

Zahrada v Opeře has earned itself a steady customer base of lunchtime businessmen and opera buffs (the restaurant is open until 1 a.m. to accommodate the hungry post-show crowd from next door), but its list of fans is bound to accumulate. They can count me, at least, as one of them.

Zahrada v Opeře
Legerova 75
Praha 1 - Vinohrady
map
Tel: 224 239 685

Open Mon-Sun 11:30 – 01:00 (Kitchen until 00:00)

images: praguespoon.com, zahradavopere.cz

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