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.
Monday, December 14, 2009
Restaurant Review: Lokál
Monday, December 7, 2009
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.
Monday, November 30, 2009
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.
Monday, November 16, 2009
Restaurant Review: Lancia Café
Here's a riddle for you. It's lunchtime and you're hungry. Because you have a pretty distinguished palate, you don't want to eat just anything. It has to be decent. Up to international standards, even.
But there's a catch: you're in Bratislava. Besides hopping in the car and driving the 60 kilometers to Vienna, what can you possibly do?
You see, there isn't much going on in Slovakia's capital in terms of restaurants. They exist, but most of them are pretty pathetic, and not even very cheap. The situation is bad enough to make wishy-washy Prague look like a culinary Mecca. As a Czech businessman I once overheard 
on the Pendolino to Bratislava said (with admirable succinctness), "It's a hole. There's nothing there."
My parents would argue otherwise. They are Slovak and spend a lot of time in their homeland, testing out various second-rate eateries in the hope that they will find someplace worth revisiting. And after a while, they did find a place – three places, in fact.
It just so happens that all three of those restaurants are in the same building (the Erdödy Palác), owned by the same company, and presided over by a single chef. And it also happens that that chef is Czech. His name is Jaroslav Židek, and the restaurants are called Camouflage, Flowers, and Lancia Café.
I've been to all three establishments multiple times. Camouflage is the most expensive, with fancy French-inspired cuisine; I liked the food, but found it to be a little complicated for my taste – I vaguely recall a chocolate fondant that came with about ten different accessories. Flowers has upscale Italian food that is very tasty (try the saffron, shrimp, and asparagus risotto), but its best asset is its atmosphere: situated in an airy, glassed-over courtyard, its walls are plastered all the way up to the ceiling with original prints of Andy Warhol's "Flowers" series.
So why did I choose to write about Lancia Café, which is the least fancy of the three and a bit more of a bar and café than a real restaurant? I'm going to blame this one on my mom and dad, who are regulars there, and who swore up and down that I was going to absolutely love it. "Best restaurant in Bratislava," they insisted. "And there's nothing like it in Prague." Well, that was true at least. I can't think of a Prague restaurant that serves both crêpes and yaki soba noodles – a combination that I didn't necessarily find appealing, but I was going to try the place anyway.
When I visited, it was still warm enough to sit outside on Lancia Café's wood-plank terrace. The setup is great for checking out the hordes of people as they stroll up and down Bratislava's main pedestrian thoroughfare. The café is less appealing on the inside, where stark lighting, flat-screen TVs and black plastic chairs make the place feel vaguely futuristic and very cold.
The menu consists of a few Asian-inspired bar snacks and entrees, some soups and sandwiches, and the aforementioned crêpes and their savory buckwheat flour counterpart, the galette. My galette came with shrimp, hard-boiled eggs, leek, and crème fraiche (€8.80). It was also cold.
Maybe it was because I was sitting outside, but by the time it got to me, my galette was no longer fresh off the pan. It was the same story on a subsequent visit, when my companion ordered the spinach and mushroom galette (€8.13). It probably would have helped if the plates had been heated. Otherwise, the galettes were all right, but the dough was a little bland, as if it needed to be salted more. These were far inferior – and a lot more expensive – to the galettes at La Crêperie in Holešovice. So far, I was unimpressed.
I was happier with the tom yum gai soup (€3.82), which was both warm enough and had a sweet-spicy kick. Still, my mother claimed she'd had better versions of the soup there before, and after some thought, she admitted that the food was often inconsistent. Depending on who was cooking that night, it seemed, the dishes were always a little different.
If that is indeed the case, I hope the chicken with green curry (€12.12) is usually better. When I had it, it was incredibly greasy, with oil gathered in pools at the top, and tasted only of chili and nothing more. The chicken was tough and stringy, a surprise after the tender chicken sate appetizer (€7.47) I'd just had. Plus, we had to wait an absurdly long time for our main courses to arrive.
It's not all bad at Lancia Café. They have a fantastic salad comprised of papaya, celery root, green beans, and grilled shrimp in a spicy lime dressing (€10.79), and a simple but tasty chicken stir-fry (€13.11). And their desserts can be pretty great, too: the Thai classic sticky rice with mango, honey, and coconut milk (€5.48) and a range of homemade ice creams and sorbets (the chocolate sorbet is particularly wonderful). They also are the only restaurant in Slovakia to brew the top-quality "sustainable" coffee Tierra Lavazza, a blend harvested exclusively from three small communities in Colombia, Peru, and Honduras.
Was all this good enough to make me a believer? I will probably visit Lancia Café again the next time I'm in Bratislava. But I’m still not sure it could live up to the standards of a more cosmopolitan city and a more demanding clientele. Looks like all that time in the home country has made my parents soft. Nice try, guys, but next time you'll have to come up with something better.
Lancia Café
Ventúrska 1 - Erdödyho Palác
Bratislava, Slovakia
Tel.: +421 2 209 227 22
Open Mon-Sun 08:00-01:00
photographs 1, 3, 5, 6 Tomáš Hájek for Lidové Noviny; all others lanciacafe.sk
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 31/10/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Monday, November 2, 2009
Prague Burgers: A (Small-Scale) Investigation
What makes a good burger a good burger? Well, for starters, the burger can't be a karbanátek.
I've seen some people in these parts frown on the notion of a hamburger being anything more than a quick food alternative to a real meal. But across the ocean in the hamburger's adopted home, putting together the all-American meat sandwich has turned into something of an art. Top-notch chefs like Daniel Boulud and Hubert Keller are opening burger restaurants, and some are even making them with luxury ingredients like foie gras and truffles.
I suspect it'll be some time before we see those kinds of ingredients on our burgers here, but there are a few places making a solid effort (and some not so solid) at dishing out the classic American meal. I went to six different local establishments that reportedly have good burgers, and ordered a bacon cheeseburger where available. Here are the results:
Bohemia Bagel Holešovice
Weekends are Burger Weekends at the Holešovice branch of Bohemia Bagel, when their usual selection of burgers is doubled; variations include the Falafel Burger, the Greek Burger, and the Steak Burger. But their classic version, the Bohemia Burger (135 CZK, plus an extra 20 CZK for bacon and American cheese), is probably their best: a juicy-flame-grilled patty on a toasted sesame bun slathered with garlic butter and served with lettuce, tomatoes, and onions. The bacon was crispy and the cheddar cheese was plentiful – but alas, there were no pickles, and the fries were miserably limp and soggy.
Fraktal
Judging by the recommendations I'd gotten, I thought the Fraktal burger was supposed to be something really special. And it was special, but not in the way I'd hoped. This was one sad little patty (I chose the small 125g burger for 170 CZK; a 200g burger is also available for 195 CZK), black and shriveled on the outside and overdone and rubbery on the inside. The top layer of the sesame seed roll was crumbling, as if it had been defrosted after spending the last six months at the bottom of a freezer. Not recommended.
Hard Rock Café 
I hate to give the Best Burger in Prague title to a big corporation, but this one was really good. The choice here is between ten different types of burgers in two different sizes: Legendary (285g of meat for 320 CZK) or Regular (starting at 220 CZK for 170g of meat). My HRC bacon cheeseburger had the telltale criss-cross marks of a flame-grilled patty, was perfectly medium-rare and came on a toasted brioche-style bun. The bacon was crispy, the meat was juicy, and there were potato peel fries on the side (not enough of them, though). The best part? The service at Hard Rock Café is simply stellar.
Jama
Jama's burger doesn't have pickles, but it does have tomatoes, red onions, lettuce, and… olives? To get a bacon cheeseburger here, you pay 175 CZK for a cheeseburger or a bacon burger, then add 40 CZK extra for bacon and 39 CZK extra for your choice of cheese (you can save a crown if you do the math). My beef patty was crumbly and thick, with nice grill marks, but it could have used a little more seasoning. The bun was American style (sweet and light with sesame seeds) and the bacon was Czech (fatty, with very little crispiness). Jama was the only restaurant I tried that had steak fries, but the service was excruciatingly slow. And I could have done without those olives.
Mozaika 
Mozaika's is a cheese-less burger (199 CZK), topped instead with garlic mayo and sautéed onions and mushrooms. I liked the effort at ingenuity here – the string fries come with a homemade spicy tomato dip and the burger is served on spinach foccacia – but the execution was all wrong. This was a straight-up karbanátek, with the meat all mashed together into an unappetizing lump, and the focaccia was saltless and soggy. I remember this hamburger being a lot better once upon a time.
Potrefená H
usa Dejvice
This Husa makes its 200g burgers (268 CZK) with beef tenderloin. That sounds good in theory, but tenderloin is really too lean a meat to make a juicy enough patty – and this one was under-salted, too. The toppings (American cheese, red onions, lettuce, tomato) were plentiful and fresh, and the shoestring fries were great, but they couldn’t make up for the white bacon and tasteless beef. It'll satisfy a craving, but you won't be dreaming about it.
photographs: 1 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others Prague Spoon
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 12/09/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Monday, October 19, 2009
Restaurant Review: U Emy Destinnové
It seldom seems to happen – in this country, anyway – that a restaurant's best asset is its kitchen. Lots of places are long on atmosphere, and nowadays you can even count on reasonably good service at most higher-end restaurants. But good chefs are still few and far between.
One of the exceptions is U Emy Destinnové, whose owner and head chef Steven Trumpfheller outclasses both his restaurant's location and its waitstaff. His menu is eclectic but not unfocused, a mix of mostly American and Italian-style classics.
I just can't g
et over the pumpkin risotto (180 CZK) I had there the other night. Creamy without being too heavy, the dish was a perfect balance of flavors. That was also because of one other crucial addition: bacon, fried to near crispiness (this is an American chef, after all, who knows how to cook his bacon) and folded into the risotto in small pieces. The fact is that bacon will make more or less any dish taste better – I recently sampled some bacon-flavored chocolate, and I loved it – but in the risotto, combined with the pumpkin's distinctive sweetness and the sharp tang of Parmesan, it was a truly inspired combo.
I couldn't say as much for U Emy Destinnové's interior design. Before the restaurant's recent renovation, it had a quirky, old-fashioned living room feel to it, with lots of strange knickknacks and some ratty gray couches left over from its previous incarnation as Czech restaurant JB Club. The getup felt a bit inappropriate for the food, to be sure, so a refurb was definitely in order. Now, the place has been tidied up and the couches have been reupholstered, but it's lost some of its charm. The beige walls are a little drab, and the maroon-colored runners over the tables feel out of date, like something you'd find in an old hotel restaurant in Communist-era Czechoslovakia.
On my second visit, there was a massive group dinner taking up the whole of the large front room (U Emy Destinnové offers several banquet menus), so my friends and I were seated in the little room in the back. That would have been perfectly cozy if we hadn't been within spitting distance of the bathrooms – they were separated from us by a partition wall, but every time someone left the toilet door open we were washed over by a familiar, unpleasant aroma. Because there was no self-closing mechanism on the bathroom doors, one of us would have to get up and shut them ourselves – and I don't especially like playing toilet porter on an evening out to dinner.
Then there was the problem of the lights being too dim, making it hard to read the menu and see the food properly. And although live piano music is a nice idea, this particular piano player didn't really do it for me. His style was aggressive and unpleasant, not fading gently into the background as it should have, but overriding our conversation. Moreover, he had a creepy habit of staring directly at me and my female friend for long periods of time as he played.
During earlier, pre-renovation visits to U Emy Destinnové, I remember being bowled over by the service. This time, it wasn't bad by any means – particularly on my first visit, when the waiter was impressively on point – but it did occasionally seem slightly amateurish. During the first evening, the server eagerly told us what dishes they had available as specials, but on the second, I had to ask if they had any specials before he thought to tell us. And I found their rattling off of all the aperitifs they had on offer (even when we had already declined) a little annoying.
Still, I was impressed with how timely the service was, even with that massive group in the front room. I had been dismayed when we first walked in that night – usually, kitchens get overwhelmed by the demands of the banquet and the timing of the smaller tables' meals suffers. But everything came out at just the right moment, and they even found the opportunity to show us the lamb and swordfish they had on special that night.
I had the swordfish in the form of a carpaccio (215 CZK), and it was great – fresh, beautifully sliced, and arranged around a small salad with capers and cherry tomatoes. They have a thing for raw meat here, with three kinds of carpaccio (including bison carpaccio with dried figs and pecorino cheese, 215 CZK), a lamb tartare, and often a couple of additional types of carpaccio on the specials list. But there are other tasty appetizers, too, such as the deep-fried calamari, zucchini, and lemon (155 CZK) or the wild French duck breast with blackberry port wine demi-glaze (175 CZK).
There are a lot of originals here, and having seen the same dishes over and over again on local menus, I can appreciate the ingenuity – especially when it comes out right. The golden capon chicken served over sweet corn relish (230 CZK) was tender and juicy, with browned, crispy skin, and its mildly creamy sweet corn sauce was a nice little bit of Americana to go with it. Paired with some fluffy garlic mashed potatoes (65 CZK), this was real soul food.
So, the American in the basement of famous Czech opera singer Ema Destinnová's birth house can really cook. I'm not totally convinced by his baking (the Philadelphia cheesecake, 105 CZK, had a very soggy crust), but I only managed to sample one dessert. The portions are big, and the prices are remarkably decent. I would urge you to give U Emy Destinnové a chance. Even if a few of the other elements are a little out of place, the food is definitely worth it.
U Emy Destinnové
Kateřinská 7
Praha 2 - Nové Město
map
Tel.: 224 918 425
Open Mon-Fri 11:30-23:30, Sat 18:00-23:30. Closed Sunday.
images 1, 2, 6 Tomáš Krist for Lidové Noviny; all others uemydestinnove.cz
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 03/10/09 edition of Lidové Noviny.
