Restaurant Review: Sahara

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 02/08/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

Imagine you're a would-be restaurateur in a booming European metropolis. Through luck or cleverness, you've been blessed with an incredible spot for your restaurant, a sprawling corner space with a huge storefront and impressive outdoor seating; it's even on a busy square and in one of the city's trendiest neighborhoods. You invest in expensive furnishings, in creating a theme and an instantly appealing atmosphere, and soon enough, your restaurant becomes a regular hangout for the beautiful and the well-to-do.

What do you do then? Do you make every effort to keep your fancy (and surely fickle) clientele happy? Or do you serve second-rate food and hire a staff that couldn't make it through a day working the register at McDonald's?

All of Prague should be buzzing about Sahara Café. It truly does have one of the city's most striking set-ups – two spacious, breezy floors of cozy couches, Moroccan details, and a wraparound balcony overlooking a large and well-manicured courtyard garden. But whenever I mention Sahara to people I know, they all have more or less the same opinion of the place: it's got an awesome atmosphere, but the service is absolutely brutal, and the food is at best 'okay.'

I'd have to agree with them. At times, the level of service is embarrassingly low. On one visit, instead of walking around the table to stand beside me to serve my entrée as any half-sensible person would have done, our server leaned over my companion and stretched his arm two meters across the table to put my plate down in front of me. In performing this balancing act, he was forced to tip the dish, sending the piping-hot sauce dribbling off the plate, through the slats of the wooden table, down my leg, and into my shoe.

The waiter seemed to find this hilarious. I didn't.

During another dinner, our waitress disappeared for a full forty-five minutes after clearing our plates, only to reappear in the background, giggling and playing tug-of-war with a male server and the menus he was holding. We never did manage to flag her down. Instead, we scouted out another waiter to ask him for our check. He looked a bit confused, but to his credit, he did get us the bill. Eventually.

So some of the staff working the tables at Sahara is mildly dense. Still, it would be unfair to say that all of the problems are their fault. I suspect the restaurant is understaffed, and since they don't seem to know even the most elementary basics, what waiters they do hire must receive little to no training on the job. They could really use a good manager.

And it looks like they might need some help in the kitchen, too. Waits between courses can be far too long, and when they finally do arrive, the portions tend to be small and the food is on the greasy side. A plate of ravioli (220 CZK) arrived swimming in a soup of butter, and the hummus (120 CZK) had been drowned in olive oil. An octopus salad (190 CZK) that came with crushed olives, bell peppers, carrots, and arugula was one of the highlights, but olive oil was used too heavily in that dish, as well.

Then there was the mysteriously crunchy filling in the meat lasagna (220 CZK) and a grilled tuna steak in a rosemary and garlic marinade (480 CZK) that was overcooked to the point of leatheriness. But all that was downright gourmet compared to the awful "oriental style" tiger prawn stir fry (480 CZK) I had one night as an entrée.

If the stir fry's sauce had tasted better, I might have been more upset at losing part of it to the inside of my ballerina flat. As it stood, though, the gravy was little more than diluted soy sauce and had completely drenched the rice at the bottom of the dish. Worse still, the rice was of the cheapest variety and the prawns had been cooked until they were mushy and dry. The only vegetables accompanying the shrimp were some large, lazily-chopped pieces of fresh ginger, red chili peppers, and green onions, plus the fresh parsley that was dusted over just about every dish that left the kitchen. I wouldn't have paid 100 CZK for this plate, let alone close to 500 CZK.

Sahara cheapens itself further with a scattered international menu, apparently designed to please as many palates as possible. Italian pastas are listed next to Argentinian meats and Middle Eastern mezzes, along with French-style foie gras and Asian-esque prawns. Perhaps this randomness is meant to reflect the strange inconsistencies in the décor. What, for example, are Indian antiques and a Thai Buddha doing in a restaurant called Sahara? I guess if it isn't European, it's all pretty much the same thing.

Whether Sahara's major problem is cluelessness, carelessness, or a combination of both, it doesn't really matter in the end. The setup is enticing enough that even with the bad service and mediocre food, it still gets plenty of customers.

But Sahara could easily be a knockout, a restaurant so popular that despite its massive size, it would be impossible to snag a table there without booking in advance. I would love to see it transformed into a classy, honest restaurant with professional staff and well-made food. The space is just too good for the amateur circus that’s running there now.

Sahara Café
Náměstí Míru 6
Praha 2 – Vinohrady
map
Tel: 222 514 987

images: praguespoon.com, saharacafe.cz

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Restaurant Review: Noi

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 26/07/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

When I visit a Thai restaurant for the first time, I always make sure to taste their pad Thai. The salty-sweet noodle dish is one of Thailand's signature culinary exports, and sampling it can be a good measure of how serious a restaurant is about making quality ethnic cuisine.
Noi's version (180 CZK with chicken, 220 CZK with shrimp) passes the test. The flat rice noodles had been cooked just right and they were coated in enough oil to keep them moist, but not so much as to make them heavy on the stomach (in fact, "real" pad Thai – the kind served from food carts on the streets of Bangkok – is drier and less rich than the Western version, but it's rarely made that way outside of Asia). Many Asian restaurants, including some in Prague, use monosodium glutamate to enhance their dishes' flavor, but Noi doesn't seem to be one of them – their pad Thai wasn't overpoweringly salty, as it can be in kitchens that do use artificial flavor enhancers.

All the right ingredients were there: scallions, peanuts, fried tofu, scrambled egg, and cilantro, with a hint of fish sauce and tamarind. I would have added some fresh bean sprouts, and my shrimp were a little undercooked, but this was nonetheless one of the better pad Thais I've had in Prague.

The good food was a pleasant surprise. Just a couple of months ago, Noi was Downtown Café, a hip restaurant serving up salads and sandwiches and house music. The thumping beats are still there, courtesy of a DJ booth nestled into the corner (I'm not sure if it gels with the supposedly Zen-like atmosphere, but whatever), and you can still order a club sandwich off their breakfast menu. Now, though, Thai food is the focus, and the switchover doesn't seem to have been a bad idea at all.

On a recent midweek visit, Noi was packed with customers – a testament, perhaps, to the popularity of Thai cuisine among local restaurant-goers. Behind an orange glass wall, Thai chefs could be seen chopping fresh vegetables and frying up noodles in woks as hungry patrons reclined in leather armchairs. If the colonial-style décor seems a little familiar, it might be because it's been brought in from the Le Patio store next door. Le Patio made its name importing furniture and decorative items from Southeast Asia, and since the mid-'90s, the shop's distinctive goods have been spotted in many a restaurant around town. So the interior isn't the most original, but at least it's well-suited to the overall theme.

I prefer the small courtyard out back, where stone statues rest alongside laurel trees and fresh flowers adorn the tables. The relaxed atmosphere is complemented by a laid-back approach to table service on the part of the wait staff – and that's putting it kindly. During both of my meals at Noi, the servers were friendly but seemed disorganized, frazzled, and forgetful; they came off more as first-timers than professionals.

For one thing, they didn't seem to know much about the food. When I asked what distinguishes the red and green curries (the difference tends to be quite subtle, but one is usually spicier than the other; on Noi's menu, though, their description and spiciness level were the same), our waitress simply shrugged and said she had no idea. And when my companion requested chopsticks with his meal, she ran off without asking if the rest of the table might want some, too.

I'm hoping the service will improve as Noi settles in over the next few months. For their part, the kitchen staff seems to have their routines figured out – minus the occasional hiccup, such as when one of my main courses appeared at the table long before I was finished with my starter.

What's more important is that the food they're whipping up back there really is good. The green curry with chicken (160 CZK) was properly spicy and packed with vegetables, including eggplant, bell peppers, pea pods, fresh ginger, and Thai basil. Miraculously, the veggies hadn't been overcooked to death; they retained their crunchiness and natural color, which together with the creamy green curry sauce made for a meal as aesthetically pleasing as it was flavorful.

I also enjoyed Noi's tom kah kai (70 CZK), a rich soup made with coconut cream and lemongrass and served with mushrooms and chicken, but I was less satisfied with the vegetarian spring rolls (80 CZK). They weren't bad – I did like the crispy texture of the roll itself – but the stuffing of glass noodles, shiitake mushrooms, and carrots was a little bland and could have used some more fresh vegetables. Plus, the dipping sauce the rolls came with was the usual sweet-and-sour from a bottle that you find almost anyplace else. A homemade sauce would go a long way towards differentiating Noi from other Thai restaurants.

It does stand out from most of the rest, anyway. For reasonable prices, it offers more or less authentic Thai cuisine prepared with fresh ingredients and careful attention. If they'd tighten up the service and a few of the problems in the kitchen, Noi could very well become the best Thai restaurant in Prague. Which isn't saying much, of course. But we have to start somewhere.

Noi
Újezd 19
Praha 1 - Malá Strana
map
tel.: +420 257 311 411

images: praguespoon.com

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Restaurant Review: Safir / Beas

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 07/06/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

With a surging interest in gourmet cuisine among its residents, Prague can now lay claim to plenty of upscale restaurants. But some of its best and most interesting food is also its least expensive – and doesn’t require table service. Here’s an overview of two great spots to get a satisfying meal for under 150 CZK.






When its original location on Havelská shut down, fans of Safir Grill’s reliable, low-cost Lebanese food found themselves without a place to go. Not long after, the restaurant re-emerged, this time simply as Safir, in the newly-built Nový Smíchov shopping mall.

This low-key Middle Eastern joint is a nice addition to the typical food court – not as greasy as the McDonald’s across the way, but not as time-demanding as some of the sit-down restaurants nearby. At lunchtime, the lines at Safir are long, but the wait is minimized by the efficient and friendly staff.

There’s a variety of classic Lebanese dishes here, both with and without meat: gyros, tabbouleh, dolmas, and falafel are among them. For a convenient to-go food, try the twister gyros, a tightly-wrapped sandwich of roasted chicken and cabbage in Lebanese bread. It’s something like KFC’s Twister sandwich, only better – and certainly healthier.

Safir’s tabbouleh is a little on the flavorless side, probably because they make theirs with curly parsley instead of the more tasty (and less common in these parts) flat Italian variety. But their hummus and baba ganoush are delicious, especially when paired with a plate of crispy, freshly-made falafel patties.

I also love their grape leaves and cabbage leaves, which come served with the refreshing yoghurt and cucumber sauce known as tzatziki. For dessert, they offer sticky-sweet pistachio or peanut baklava (pistachio is better) or the soft, spongy harisa cake, in either coconut or walnut versions. Everything can be wrapped up to go, so it’s a good option for a last-minute dinner when you don’t feel like cooking.

The atmosphere is a little lacking, but what can you expect from a shopping mall restaurant? Safir does their best under the circumstances, with mosaic tables, Arabic-style mirrors, and even shisha pipes offered on the menu – though I have yet to see anyone try them. Just watch out for your belongings; thieves occasionally lurk among the tables, looking for a stray purse to grab while its owner has her hands full of falafel.

Late last year, Safir opened up a second location in the DBK department store at Budějovická. I still wish they had a spot downtown, since there’s an unfortunate lack of good quality, low-budget Middle Eastern food in the city center. Maybe they’ll be back someday. For now, we’ll have to rely on shopping malls in order to get our Safir fix.

Safir
OC Nový Smíchov
Plzeňská 8 – Praha 5
map
Tel: 257 310 149

DBK Praha
Budějovická 1667/64 – Praha 4
map
Tel: 296 825 111







It almost seems too good to be true: two portions of vegetable stew, rice, salad, soup, yoghurt sauce, chutney, and dessert for only 98 CZK (pictured below). But at Beas, this is the standard menu (the large one, anyway; a smaller version, which comes minus the chutney and dessert, goes for 85 CZK).

The food here is not only plentiful and cheap, but is some of the better Indian you’ll find in town. Beas employs Indian chefs at both its locations, and isn’t afraid of being authentic; they even serve pickles, the super-spicy condiment made of pickled fruits and vegetables.

Meat-eaters might be disappointed that Beas is exclusively vegetarian, but the offerings here are so rich and filling that some of them may hardly even notice. The generous portions of rice (either white or flavored, depending on your preference), sabji (vegetable stew), and dhal (bean, chickpea, or lentil stew) are hearty enough alone to fill up the hungriest lunchtime patrons. The other menu elements are there to round out the experience – like the raita (yoghurt sauce with herbs), which acts as a cooling contrast to the spicy stews, or the chutney (a condiment made of dates, raisins, or other fruits), whose sweet, gooey texture is a natural complement to the savory vegetables.

The set menu is served to at the counter, cafeteria-style, but if you have a little more time, it’s worth waiting for the kitchen to whip up some of the Indian specialties they prepare to order. Among these are the excellent dosa, a thin, crispy pancake made of rice and flour and stuffed with either potatoes or spinach, and the parantha, a type of whole wheat flatbread filled with a spicy potato mixture (pictured below; on a recent visit to the Bělehradská Beas, however, only two of the six made-to-order options were in stock).

Both locations have pleasant courtyards to eat in, but the interiors are perfectly nice, too, with cream-colored walls and sleek wooden chairs. At the Týnská restaurant, each table carries a silver pitcher full of tap water, a quaint touch that adds to the homey surroundings. Unfortunately, the Bělehradská location has now replaced the pitchers with plastic water filters – more hygienic, perhaps, but a little less aesthetically pleasing.

If you’re curious about Indian desserts, be sure to try Beas’s halva. Unlike Arabic halvas, which are usually sesame-based, the Indian variety is made from semolina wheat and has a soft, couscous-like consistency. Served with a thick vanilla cream, it’s the perfect way to finish a meal at the dhaba. Or try a glass of the mango lassi – like most things at Beas, it’s delicious and healthy, and it won’t strain your wallet.

Beas
Týnská 19 (in the courtyard) – Praha 1
Open Mon-Sat 11:00-20:00, Sun 11:00-18:00
map

Bělehradská 90 – Praha 2
Open Mon-Fri 11:00-21:00, Sat 12:00-20:00, Sun 12:00-18:00
map
tel.+420 608 035 727

images: praguespoon.com, beas-dhaba.cz

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Restaurant Review: Café Imperial

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 12/07/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

If you're looking for a fight, don't come to Café Imperial. Not if it's a doughnut fight you want, anyway.

This once-dingy local hangout – famous as much for its impromptu doughnut-throwing as for its awe-inspiring Art Nouveau mosaics – has dusted off the powdered sugar and reintroduced itself as a semi-swanky grand café in the style of the First Republic, sharply-dressed wait staff and all.

The unusual tradition is rooted in Zdeněk Jirotka's 1943 comic novel Saturnin, the first chapter of which describes all people as belonging in one of three categories: those who simply stare at a plate of doughnuts in a café, those who imagine throwing the doughnuts at another customer, and "people for whom the idea of a doughnut whistling through the air is such an enticement that they get up and actually make it happen."

So, in honor of Jirotka's mischievous butler, any sober customer over 21 years of age could (for the symbolically appropriate price of 1943 CZK) purchase the plate of stale doughnuts called "Saturnin's platter" set atop Café Imperial's bar and hurl the pastries at any customer or member of the staff he or she wished to target. The café would apparently cover the cost of any necessary dry cleaning. A gimmick, certainly, but a charming one at that.

But newly-installed executive chef and co-investor Zdeněk Pohlreich didn't find the prospect of greasy doughnuts flying across his shiny new interior very charming at all. When it reopened in September of last year, Imperial's well-known food-fighting tradition had faded quietly into history, the complimentary doughnuts served alongside orders of coffee the only reminder of this well-heeled café's more raucous past.

You can't really blame them for the change, I suppose. Airborne pastries don't really fit in with the new Imperial's pristine leather- and velvet-upholstered antique-style furniture and lush golden curtains. The updated look is designed to complement the majestically kitschy, Moor-inspired tile reliefs that blanket the walls and ceiling and make the café a popular destination for tourists.

With all the surrounding opulence, it's a suitable spot for some high-quality cuisine. No wonder, then, that local culinary darling Pohlreich – whose straightforward cooking style emphasizes fresh ingredients and simple combinations – was brought over to inject a certain level of class into Café Imperial's menu.

The end result is definitely a cut above the hemenex (ham and eggs) that used to be served here in the old days (though they do offer a fairly extensive all-day breakfast), but it's still mildly disappointing. Like so many restaurateurs who've invested heavily into a renovation, Imperial's owners have decided to play it safe, opting for a sprawling menu packed with tired favorites over any kind of consistency or originality.

Beef carpaccio, tuna tartare, and goat cheese salad all make an appearance, along with svíčková na smetaně (pictured above), crème brulée, and a cheeseburger. It's the usual Czech/French/a touch of American combination of dishes that we see in most mid-scale restaurants here.

That's not to say that some of them aren't very good. I loved the asparagus salad (195 CZK), a healthy pile of fresh mixed lettuce leaves and sun-dried tomatoes over a few stalks of crispy, lightly-buttered asparagus, dotted with sesame seeds for a little added flavor. One of the chef's specialties, a braised lamb shank with marjoram and creamed spinach (295 CZK), was excellent, too.

But the tuna steak with Mediterranean vinaigrette and Niçoise salad (350 CZK) is really a mystery. In fact, I'm confused by most of the tuna steaks in this country. Why do so many chefs – including Mr. Pohlreich, who has had some international experience and surely knows better – insist on overcooking their tuna? A tuna steak should only be cooked lightly on each side, leaving the inside of the fish pink, tender, and as raw as sushi; the grey cooked part should only be a thin strip around its edges. The tuna I was given at Imperial was dry and chewy and looked like it had come from a can, even though it obviously hadn't. What a waste of a perfectly good piece of fish.

Of course, chefs here tend to cook to the tastes of their customers, and I know that those who make their tuna correctly often find their plates sent back to the kitchen with a demand for a little more grill time. But shouldn't the default setting be to cook the fish properly? If the chefs aren't going to try to influence diners' tastes in the right direction, then who is?

And then there are those who push their influence a little too far. One of my waiters was obnoxiously pushy, insisting we order the lamb shank although we didn't want to (I tried it on a separate visit), pushing us to order beer instead of water, and suggesting a side of mashed potatoes to go with my companion's roast chicken (220 CZK, pictured above) – unnecessarily, it turned out, because the dish ended up coming with potatoes already on the plate.

The atmosphere is very nice at Imperial, but I can't help but think it was better back when things were a little crustier, when the chairs and tables were wooden and rickety, jazz bands used to hold impromptu jam sessions in the evenings, and the Art Nouveau details seemed almost incidental. Like so many things in Prague, Café Imperial has been stripped and sanitized, its character varnished for the benefit of older tourists with fat wallets who fear the seedier elements that used to make this city so unique and interesting.

As I sipped my espresso in the café's majestic dining room, I did find myself wondering what it would be like to throw my doughnut at an unsuspecting customer. But I would never have done it. I guess I'm not that type of person. And, for better or worse, Café Imperial is no longer that type of place.

Café Imperial
Na poříčí 15
Prague 1 - New Town
map
Tel.: 246 011 600

images: hotel-imperial.cz, praguespoon.com

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Restaurant Review: Le Cornichon

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 28/06/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

Sophisticated. Honest. Reasonably priced.

How many restaurants do you know of in Prague befitting that description? Not too many, huh? Me neither. That’s why I’m finding myself pretty tickled about Le Cornichon’s arrival on the local scene.
When I heard that yet another restaurant was about to open in the long-doomed corner space on Betlémská, I had to cringe a little. At least two locales have tried and failed there; I was sure that this one, however well-intentioned, would meet the same fate.

But despite its questionable location on a little-trafficked Old Town side street, Le Cornichon just might prove me wrong. It’s so necessary to our tired dining scene, so straightforward, so downright good that if everything goes well, this could become a destination restaurant – a spot that people don’t happen upon, but hear about and go out of their way to visit again and again.

Proprietor Vladimír Strnad cut his food industry teeth at the well-loved but ultimately unsuccessful Vršovice restaurant Atelier (along with Lubomír Mikuš, who currently runs another recently-opened Old Town hotspot, Angel). Now he’s brought his passion for French food and wine to a new venture, and in a city overpopulated with cluttered plates and too-busy interiors, Strnad’s sleek, unfussy aesthetic is a pleasure to behold.

Le Cornichon’s layout is close to ideal – a large, long room with huge windows and high ceilings, semi-divided into three sections. The interior is clean and modern, but warm, with chocolate-brown walls, bright red chairs, and white tablecloths. Above each table hang some ethereal-looking lamps that, upon closer inspection, are made with ordinary metal kitchen scrub pads. The overall effect is welcoming and a little whimsical; classy, but unpretentious.

The same could be said of both the service and the cooking style. Our waiter demonstrated a remarkable instinct for timing – he was there when we wanted him to be, and when we didn’t, he was gone. He moved quickly, with confidence and a slight air of urgency, and he was unfailingly polite without seeming servile.

Plus, he knew the basics. It should go without saying that the server should never take any plates away from the table until everybody is finished eating, but few restaurants in our country adhere to this rule. An extra trip from the waiter disturbs the guests unnecessarily; he should approach the table the minimum number of times required to keep his patrons happy.

I was impressed, too, by the way the restaurant dealt with a particular issue that crops up fairly often when dining out: what should be done when the main component of one of the dishes on the menu isn’t the freshest that day and the customer orders that very dish? Is it better to serve the less-fresh version or to tell the customer you’ve run out?

It’s better, of course, to tell the customer you don’t have the dish. He or she is much less likely to be upset by a dish’s absence than if they are served food that is sub-par. When my dining companion ordered the cod, the waiter hesitated and said he wasn’t sure if they had any left. He ran to the back to ask, and returned to say that the chef had one piece left, but that he “wouldn’t let it out of the kitchen.” So my friend ordered the sea bass instead. After we’d started on our main courses, the waiter swung by to ask if the substitute fish was all right. Perfect. I felt like giving the guy a medal.

My companion’s fish was more than all right; in fact, it was very good. Like all the food I sampled at Le Cornichon, the sea bass (375 CZK) was prepared simply and honestly. It was served whole, stuffed with a couple of orange slices and a sprig of thyme, and accompanied by a very flavorful ratatouille.

The ratatouille, a lively mixture of zucchini, eggplant, bell peppers, tomatoes, and, in this case, fennel, also made an appearance in the snail casserole (150 CZK). It’s a nice little appetizer, with the vegetables a good match for the twelve chewy little slugs. Unfortunately, when I ordered them, the snails were quite grainy – I suppose they hadn’t been washed properly, and some dirt from the garden had made it onto my plate.

The escargots’ grittiness was quickly forgotten when I tasted my main course, a tender, slow-cooked hare à la royale in a luscious red wine sauce (325 CZK). Its only accompaniment was a handful of tagliatelle pasta, but the meat was rich and tasty enough to stand on its own.

Le Cornichon has a few things to work on – the unattractive brown-tiled bathrooms, for example, or an amuse-bouche that was rather large and sloppy and didn’t come with any plates.

But small, home-style places like this one serve to remind us of how good our restaurants can be with a little effort, a lot of heart, and a lack of laziness. Case in point: Le Cornichon’s dessert menu, which miraculously avoids all three French restaurant after-dinner clichés (crème brulee, chocolate mousse, and fondant au chocolat) and offers us something different.

Finally, somebody in this town is willing to take some risks and give their customers the honest treatment they deserve. Now let’s hope a few other restaurants decide to follow Le Cornichon’s lead.

Le Cornichon
Betlémská 9
Prague 1 - Old Town
map
Tel.: 222 211 766

Open Mon – Sat 16:00 – 23:00

Note to readers: Le Cornichon will be closed for renovation during the months of July and August.

images: lecornichon.cz

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Restaurant Review: Omnia Hotel

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 21/06/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

Can a restaurant in the mountains compete with those in Prague?

According to chef Martin Haken, the answer is a decided yes. He and the management of the recently-built four-star Omnia Hotel in Jánské Lázně have made a fair amount of hoopla about their self-styled mission to offer guests a culinary experience as grand as any to be found in the capital city.
In theory, it’s a great idea. Many discerning visitors to the Krkonoše have lamented the Czech mountains’ general lack of high-quality dining and accommodation. When Omnia opened in October of last year, it was heralded as a much-needed oasis of luxury in a beautiful landscape blighted by amateurish pensions and mediocre cuisine.

Unfortunately, at least as far as the restaurant goes, the word ‘luxurious’ doesn’t exactly spring to my mind as an appropriate descriptor.

I can’t speak to the quality of the hotel’s lodgings, but I must say that Omnia did strike me as an attractive place to stay. Situated just at the foot of the newly reconstructed Černá Hora cable car, the building comes across as rather simple and box-like; the concept behind the construction, apparently, was for the hotel to blend in with its pristine natural surroundings. Many of the rooms have balconies facing a quiet, tree-covered slope, and the hotel's various amenities include a sports hall, sauna, and indoor swimming pool. Its lobby is all sharp angles and charcoal-grey walls, except for a clever display of birch tree trunks stacked and lit up behind clear glass paneling at the reception counter.

The hotel restaurant also highlights this unusual blend of stark minimalism and raw natural elements: bare light bulb lamps hang from the ceiling while the long bar is studded with tree trunks, this time cut into cross-sections that make for a pretty pattern of wooden circles. The pared-down interior might strike some seasoned city-dwellers as a little too familiar – Praguers have seen similar creations popping up nearly everywhere, from Kampa Group restaurants to shopping mall cafés – but this sort of design is quite the novelty in the Krkonoše, and it contrasts pleasantly with the outdoor scenery visible through the restaurant's expansive windows.
Of course, an eatery with two kinds of foie gras on its menu is pretty unheard of in these parts, too. There’s nothing wrong with wanting to class up the countryside a little – I’m all for it, if it’s done right. But at Omnia, it’s done only halfway, with the hope, perhaps, that since there’s no other fancy-ish restaurant anywhere near Jánské Lázně, a bit of cheating will be forgiven or go unnoticed.

When our main courses arrived, I couldn't help but notice that, although one was veal (480 CZK), another salmon (240 CZK) and the third chicken (205 CZK), they all looked suspiciously similar. Two of them (the veal and the chicken), it turned out, bore the same red wine reduction. The veal and the salmon, on the other hand, were both drenched in the same Hollandaise sauce, although the menu described one as Hollandaise and the other as Bearnaise. The distinction between Hollandaise and Bearnaise sauces is fairly subtle – both are an emulsion of butter in egg yolks, but Hollandaise is flavored with lemon and Bearnaise is made with vinegar and tarragon – but why note the difference on the menu when you're not going to follow through on the plate? It smacks of laziness.
But so does most of the cooking at Omnia. The shallots served with the lamb (described as "roasted") were exactly the same as the "seared" shallots that filled the goat cheese salad's butter tart (105 CZK). A "double consommé of corn-fed chicken with vegetable drums and breast poached in saffron sherry" (50 CZK) was nothing more than a small bowl of chicken broth containing a small piece of chicken and exactly one sliver each of carrot and zucchini. No vegetable "drums," whatever that was supposed to mean. And the soup was so salty that I had to suspect the kitchen of using powdered stock as a flavor enhancer.

Nevermind that my salmon had a fairly strong whiff of fishiness, or that the spinach and mushrooms accompanying it were so salty that they were literally inedible. Or that the home-made truffle cake with pineapple compote, star anise, and mango sorbet (150 CZK) arrived half-frozen and and was really pretty terrible, anyway.

To be fair, I did visit Omnia in the off-season. But Martin Haken only stepped away from his previous post at Prague's Rybí Trh in January, and one would hope that a decent level of quality could be maintained even in the spring and summer months. An Omnia Hotel press release quotes the executive chef as saying, "Janské Lázně isn't Prague, but it's a great challenge for me to prove to our guests that high-quality gastronomy isn't impossible to find outside the borders of the capital city."

Mr. Haken and his team have a long way to go before they prove that particular point. Until then, the next time I happen to find myself in Jánské Lázně, I'll be lunching on a cold Budvar and a 15-CZK párek v rohlíku at the Kolonáda downtown. The atmosphere there is pretty great, and the parek is exactly what you want it to be: simple and delicious, and not pretending to be anything it isn't. It's one Krkonoše meal, at least, that I can highly recommend.

Omnia Hotel Restaurant
Černohorská 327
Janské Lázně
map
Tel.: +420 499 859 780

images: www.omnia-hotel.com

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Restaurant Review: Brasserie M (CLOSED)

This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 14/06/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.

There’s nothing like a little snobbery to greet you when you first walk into a French restaurant. It adds a certain authenticity, n’est-ce pas?

I guess that’s what owner Jean-Paul Manzac and his team of waiters were going for when I entered a graveyard-empty Brasserie M one lunch hour and approached the table of my choice.

“Are you expecting some other people?” they asked.

“Just one.”

“Do you have a reservation?”

I glanced around the restaurant. There were at least a hundred empty seats. “No.”

They asked me to sit at a table for two instead of the table for four I’d picked. Reluctantly, I did. My friend arrived. Soon after, a woman strolled into the restaurant, glanced around, sat at the very same table I’d just been booted from, and ordered a glass of wine. She clearly didn’t have a reservation, and she was eating alone.

When I pointed this out to the waiter, he gave me a look normally reserved for gum-chewing American tourists entering four-star Parisian restaurants in cargo shorts and flip-flops.

“That woman,” he sneered, “is a regular customer.” Cue my hasty exit – preceded, of course, by some pretty harsh words from yours truly.

I mean, come on now. Who cares if the woman was a regular? Shouldn’t they want to encourage me to be a regular, too? Service this careless would be embarrassing in any restaurant, but for an establishment in such obvious need of a boost in clientele, it’s downright moronic.

When Jean-Paul Manzac left his post as head chef at the Marriott hotel to open Brasserie M in 2005, his aim was to create a bustling restaurant that served French food more authentic than any to be found in Prague. He found a large, versatile space on Vladislavova street and handed over design duties to architect Václav Červenka, creator of the Potrefená Husa chain’s interiors, among others. The result is airy and pleasantly decorated, with a central open kitchen that allows patrons to observe the kitchen staff as they slice, dice, and deep-fry.

It should have been a winning concept. But there’s something about Brasserie M that’s keeping customers at a distance – and it’s not just the intermittently obnoxious service.

The price level definitely seems to be part of the problem. It’s hard to justify a French onion soup that costs 195 CZK, no matter how spectacular it is. And the one at Brasserie M wasn’t spectacular, just all right. The beef broth was very nice: rich, sweet, and a little boozy. But if the soup is served in a ramekin, the cheese on top should be broiled until it is slightly browned and crispy, not splotchy and white as this one was.

The story is similar with Brasserie M’s crème brûlée. 175 CZK is fairly steep for a dessert made of little more than cream, eggs, and sugar, although many restaurants are guilty of raising this simple dish to gourmet price points. Most of them do it badly, and for all its Frenchiness, Brasserie M is no exception. A good crème brûlée should have a lightly burnt, crispy crust of caramelized sugar on top – the kind of layer that Amélie Poulain famously liked to crack into with the tip of her spoon. Here, the top layer was crumbly, the grains of sugar still intact, and my spoon sunk into the cream below without a sound.

The coq au vin (545 CZK), another classic French dish, was more successful. Its meat was a little chewy, but roosters (if this was indeed a rooster) are notoriously tough birds and demand hours of cooking time to achieve any level of tenderness. It was a pleasure to eat the creamy mashed potatoes along with the thick, dark wine sauce. This is a fine dish, and a rare find in Prague restaurants.

Unfortunately, the fish entrée I tried at Brasserie M was downright terrible. The filet of John Dory arrived on a messy-looking plate covered in beet sauce, saffron, and balsamic vinegar, with four ugly little towers of celeriac puree and shamefully overcooked slices of zucchini. The fish itself was dry around the edges and had a distinct air of fishiness half-masked by a generous helping of salt. The John Dory may be an expensive little fish, but for 795 CZK, the kitchen might have come up with something a tiny bit more palatable. With higher-echelon restaurants like maze now serving stellar fish dishes in the 600-700 CZK range, places like Brasserie M should adjust either their prices or their product – or both at once, preferably.

For some reason, Brasserie M has been bestowed the Michelin Guide’s “Bib Michelin” ranking for two years in a row. The Bib is no Michelin star (it simply means “good food at good prices”), but why should this restaurant, with its decidedly not-all-that-good food and not-so-good prices, be one of only three Czech locales to receive the honor? The recognition speaks less to Brasserie M’s achievements than it does to the Michelin Guide’s well-publicized preference for all things French.

When it comes to Brasserie M, Michelin – and Mr. Manzac – may want to do some re-examining. Authentic or not, this place certainly needs a lot of work. What’s less clear is whether patrons will stick around long enough for Brasserie M to pull its act together.

I’m guessing they might not.

Brasserie M
Vladislavova 17
Praha 1 - New Town
map

Open Mon-Fri 11:00-23:00, Sat 12:00-24:00. Closed Sundays.
Tel.: +420 224 054 070

images: brasseriem.cz

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