Fear not, turkey-loving Americans: Prague has plenty of places where you can get your fill of Thanksgiving this Thursday.
If you want to eat your holiday dinner at home (but don't want to cook it yourself), Bakeshop will be selling Thanksgiving to go. They'll be making fresh turkey caramelized with dark beer, Italian sausage and bread stuffing, parmesan roasted butternut squash and more, all for 800 CZK per kilo. Pick up a bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau while you're there, too.
Bohemia Bagel in Holešovice will be having an all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet for 490 CZK per person starting at 7 pm, and Jáma is celebrating
For those who want to get all fancy-like, Allegro will be serving something along the lines of Thanksgiving dinner, and Hilton's CzecHouse and the Mandarin Oriental's Essensia will have holiday menus as well.
Reservations are strongly recommended for all of the above restaurants. Happy gobbling!
images: countryliving.com
Monday, November 24, 2008
Food news: Where to have Thanksgiving in Prague
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Food news: Slowdown at Savoy, new bakeries, Burger King, and more
Over the summer, Café Savoy closed its doors for a little while to do some renovating, the most notable change being a much-needed improvement to the toilet situation (the restrooms are now located in a new downstairs area and have multiple stalls). But it looks like they might have forgotten a few basics in the meantime.
I've had issues with Savoy's service before, but I've never had to deal with a server as surly, impatient, and incompetent as the woman in charge of our table during brunch last Sunday. She huffed and puffed and rolled her eyes as we were giving our orders, then forgot to bring half of what we'd asked for. And on a recent dinner visit, every step (ordering food, asking for another beer, getting the check) took several attempts, and our wine list didn't come until we'd ordered the first course.
A VIP sitting at the table next to ours seemed to be getting more than enough attention. Well, at least someone was happy...
Whopper fans rejoice: the Czech Republic's first Burger King will open next week in Metropole Zličín shopping mall. The franchise is owned by AmRest, the Polish company that also brought us KFC and Starbucks.
In pastry shop / bakery news, scrumptious French
patisserie Passion Chocolat has left its spot in Vinohrady and will soon be reopening in Pasáž U Nováků (on Vodičkova, connected to Lucerna Pasáž). I'm a little skeptical that the new location will give them the kind of foot traffic they need, but let's hope for the best. French chain bakery Paul has opened in Palác Flora, of all places. And Bakeshop is promising great things for Thanksg
Finally, for those who understand Czech and might want to find out a little more about me and the Prague Spoon, Lidovky's Pátek magazine published an interview with me last week, written by the positively lovely chef and food writer Hanka Michopulu.
images ambi.cz, burgerking.com, Prague Spoon, paul.fr
Monday, November 17, 2008
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
Monday, November 3, 2008
Restaurant Review: Potrefená Husa
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 11/10/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.
As I'm tucking in to my řízek dinner at the newest branch of Potrefená Husa, I receive a text message from a friend. "At Husa," he writes. "Want to come by?"
I look around the restaurant. My friend is nowhere to be seen. "Which Husa?" I reply.
If that anecdote doesn't sound familiar to you yet, it will soon enough. I can't be the only one who's been ge
tting the sense that it's impossible to walk five blocks in any direction in the center of Prague without coming across a Staropramen -branded restaurant.
The brewery's concept – a chain of modern franchised pubs that are pricier than your average hospoda but offer quality beer, good food, and friendly service – has proven to be an enormous success. The first Potrefená Husa (which opened in Vinohrady in 1999) was quickly followed by sister restaurants in Plzeň and Liberec. And over the past couple of years, new Husas have been appearing in cities across the Czech Republic with terrifying speed.
A well-run franchise operation guarantees its customers a certain level of consistency from location to location. A Big Mac is going to taste the same whether you're in Brno or San Francisco – in theory, anyway. Fast food lovers like to debate which parts of the world have the best-tasting McDonald's food (Asia, I've heard) and the worst (definitely America, at least in my limited experience).
It's a similar story with Potrefená Husa. Some Husas are better than others. And not all of the individual restaurants manage to keep up the level of quality their corporate overlords expect.
The recently-opened Husa on Platnéřská, for example, seems to have a higher standard of food service than most of its counterparts. Unfortunately, it lacks the atmosphere of the nearby branch on Bílkova – which, after an apparent change in management, has lately become home to some incompetent and surly staff. And unlike at McDonald's, the burger present on most (if not all) Husa menus is completely different from location to location.
So where does the latest incarnation of this Czech pub chain stand among its counterparts? For now, at least, I'd say it's somewhere near the top of the pack.
The Husa I'm referring to is on the corner of Hybernská and Dlážděná, just adjacent to the Masarykovo train station at a spot formerly occupied by a very sketchy Chinese bufet. It's the twenty-fifth Husa to date, and also the largest, seating around 200 people on three floors. Huge windows shine plenty of light on the by now familiar style of décor: a long bar at the front, raised wooden tables, and yellow linoleum floors. Upstairs is a kind of mezzanine with comfortable lounge chairs, and the basement houses a cozy beer cellar with room for 100 customers.
As far as I'm concerned, though, this Husa's claim to fame isn't its size, but its service. All of the servers (and there were lots of them – Husas tend to be well-staffed) I encountered during my visits were not only cordial, but downright enthusiastic. They went out of their way to greet us when we entered the restaurant, they moved with a sense of urgency, and they systematically stopped by our table to ask if everything was all right after we had gotten our food. That last gesture is standard practice in American restaurants and one that should be adopted here more often – a quick check-in allows the customer to ask for that missing fork or a second Mattoni or to have their steak thrown back on the grill.
And, crucially, they weren't annoying. We didn't have waiters hovering around our table or filling up my water glass every time I took a sip; they simply went about their business politely and efficiently. Even the waitress who had an "In training" badge pinned to her shirt was better than most servers I've come across lately. I wouldn't mind sending a few managers of high-end Prague restaurants to Potrefená Husa to see how proper staff training is done.
The news isn't all good in the food department: a chicken broth featured overcooked noodles and peas so hard you could break your teeth on them, the svíčková na smetaně's meat was pretty tough to swallow, and the hamburgers come with cucumbers instead of pickles. But as I've found with every Husa I've visited, there are always a couple of gems on the menu. You just need to figure out what they are.
So far, I've managed to unearth a few goodies at the Hybernská location. One of them is the chicken schnitzel with mashed potatoes and cucumber salad (129 CZK) – a simple dish cooked well, with the chicken freshly fried in clean oil and the mash fluffy and rich -- a great comfort food. The koprová omáčka (beef with dill sauce) I tried as a lunch special falls into that category, too. I'd also recommend the beef carpaccio with arugula, capers, olives, and parmesan (179 CZK), and the fresh strawberries marinated in Grand Marnier served with a scoop of creamy chocolate ice cream (89 CZK).
Old-school pub-goers have been known to grumble about the Husification of Czech pubs, and there is something to their complaints. It can be disheartening to see a classic neighborhood watering hole displaced by a corporate franchise outlet that will look and feel just about the same as twenty-four others (and counting).
But there's a plus side to Husa's presence in our restaurant market, too. When the world's first gastropub, The Eagle, was opened in London's Clerkenwell in 1991, its owners expressed a desire to promote good-quality food in places where ordinary people liked to hang out. At that time, English cuisine was widely considered to be inedible. Now, countless gastropubs and a handful of celebrity chefs later, the U.K. is at the forefront of high-end gastronomy.
We won't necessarily see the same kind of phenomenon happening in the Czech Republic, but there are already signs that all those Husas are having an influence. The food at the famed U Zlatého Tygra pub, for example, used to be absolutely inedible. Now, for 85 CZK, they serve some of the best roast beef in town. I can't vouch for the rest of their menu, but still – awesome beer and great beef? I'm not going to argue with that kind of change.
And neither should you.
Potrefená Husa
Dlážděná 1003/7
Praha 1 – Nové Město
map
Open Sun – Thurs 11.00 - 24.00, Fri – Sat 11.00 - 01.00
Tel.: 224 243 631
images: Staropramen.cz, Prague Spoon
Monday, October 27, 2008
Restaurant Review: U Modré Kachničky
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 04/10/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.
When U Modré Kachničky (At the Blue Duckling) was in its heyday, the restaurant was locally famous for its romantic atmosphere, home-style food and, at least among my family, its wonky Czech-to-English translations.
The only menu gaffe I can remember now is the name of a certain side dish – "lubricated potatoes" – 
though there must have been many more (on one visit, a friend of my parents' who could understand the German and French translations as well almost peed herself laughing).
Alas, U Modré Kachničky's menu has by now been tidied and polished to a perfectly comprehensible (if not always strictly correct) standard of English. And something else has happened here, too. Over the years, Kachnička's once-elegant interior has become worn and shabby, and the quality of the food has dropped to a pathetic low.
Now before you start composing your letter of complaint to my over-burdened superiors at Lidovky, do me a personal favor and try to picture the following situation in your mind.
After arriving at U Modré Kachničky for a special dinner with your significant other, you peruse the menu and decide to forgo the traditional duck. Instead, you order vepřo knedlo zelo (roast pork with dumplings and cabbage); it's a Czech classic, and one that has disappeared from many pubs and restaurants, so you're delighted to see it on offer.
Unfortunately, by the time the plate reaches your table, the food is almost cold. It includes two very small portions of cabbage, one white and the other red. Both are fairly tasteless and have been thickened by a slimy clear gravy. The špekový knedlík (bacon dumpling) is decent, if a little dry.
But the vepřo itself is the real insult. The meat is of poor quality, stringy and hard to chew. It is also so salty that you can't help but suspect it has been marinated in the stuff, perhaps in an effort to keep the meat fresh. And when you slice into it, you see that the inside is pink: raw, which, of course, cooked pork should never be.
Let's assume you don't have a particular fondness for contracting trichinosis in fancy restaurants. How much would you pay for that vepřo knedlo I just described? 150 CZK? No?
Try 420 CZK.
Those poor American tourists sitting in the other room. If they'd only saved their hard-earned $24 and spent it on an entrée back home, they would be enjoying a meal of an entirely different caliber. But since their dishonest hotel or guidebook must have told them that this was the place to go for authentic Czech fare, they're stuck here. And when they return home, they're bound to tell their friends in America that the food in Prague is expensive and terrible.
No wonder foreign visitors have been keeping their distance from the Czech Republic lately – a bad reputation, after all, spreads quickly.
But for some reason, U Modré Kachničky has managed to keep up a good name, even among locals. Could it be the yellowed newspaper clippings posted outside the door proudly announcing Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's visit to the restaurant back in 1995? Or maybe Czech people enjoy drinking their Plzeň from 0.33l-bottles for 80 CZK apiece? I'm Slovak, you see, so it's hard for me to be sure.
Seriously, though: a Czech restaurant specializing in roast duck that doesn't serve tapped beer? Either Kachnička is playing some kind of joke on its customers or it really just doesn't give a damn.
I did try one of the duck dishes, by the way. It was served on a sauce of dried plums and slivovice (480 CZK, pictured above). There wasn't much to it – just some stewed prunes that had been marinated in alcohol – so it tasted very boozy and sour. The duck meat was all right, but its skin was bunched-up and soggy, wet rag style. And the potato pancakes served on the side were nothing more than some mashed potatoes (obviously belonging to another dish) that had been pressed into patties and fried on a greasy pan.
I wasn't bowled over by the famous atmosphere, either. Maybe that was because I was seated in a kind of anteroom to the kitchen and toilets and I was treated to the comings and goings of waitstaff printing out checks at the register beside me and noisily gathering cutlery from the sideboard. Sometimes, as servers went in and out of the kitchen, I would catch a glimpse of a bunch of clutter and a dirty-looking tiled floor and hear the yelling of the cooking staff.
Even the main rooms didn't strike me as especially pleasant. The antique furniture and painted murals do lend the place a sense of old-world authenticity, but there is something unattractive about the cold quality of the lighting and the way the tables are all crammed in very close to one another.
Given all this amateurishness, it was surprising to find a service staff so on point. They were professional and friendly even with customers who were obvious tourists. I did have to wonder about the water, though. Non-sparkling mineral water was served from a glass pitcher (for 180 CZK) and tasted suspiciously like the kind you'd find coming from your kitchen tap.
Or maybe the tap water was just my imagination, now biased from having endured that painful vepřo knedlo. Still, the waiters should be pouring water from the bottle into the pitcher in front of their patrons so they can be sure they're not being cheated.
It doesn't really matter, though. Customers are being cheated at U Modré Kachničky either way. And if you don't believe me, try it for yourself. If you can justify those prices for that food, go ahead and write that letter.
Just don't say I didn't warn you.
U Modré Kachničky
Nebovidská 6
Praha 1 – Malá Strana
map
Tel: 257 320 308
images: umodrekachnicky.cz, praguespoon.com
Monday, October 20, 2008
Restaurant Review: Luka Lu
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 27/09/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Every week, I have the task of figuring out which restaurant I'm going to review next. I take into consideration the kinds of places I did recently, what people might enjoy reading about, and any interesting tips I may have received.
Once I've made a decision, I schedule my visits. I like to go at least twice to each restaurant, preferably for both lunch and dinner. Eating at the same spot two or three days in a row can be kind of boring, so I try to leave some time in between.
And then I need to work out who's coming with me.
Believe i
t or not, it can be hard to recruit people. Friends and family who once saw eating out with a restaurant critic as an exciting novelty have started angling for a little more choice in the matter, realizing that they'd prefer to eat at the restaurants they already know and love. "Can't we just go to Café Savoy again?" they say. "We know it's good." One friend has even become convinced that her presence is a curse and the food turns out to be bad every time she comes along (it has, but I'm pretty sure it's not her fault).
Although trying out restaurants that I otherwise might never set foot into is part of my job, eating alone isn't all that fun. That's why I occasionally do my restaurant-going companions – and myself – a favor and pick a place I know they're going to love.
This week, that place was Luka Lu. When I wrote about it for a different publication some time ago, I brought my brother along to dinner and he fell in love with a certain octopus dish he tried there. So he was very happy to have an excuse to visit again.
As his luck would have it, of course, the restaurant didn't have any octopus left. After the waitress informed him of this, my brother promptly shot me an accusatory look, as if I was the one who'd done Luka Lu's grocery shopping that day. He reluctantly picked another dish.
Fortunately, it's hard to make a bad choice at Luka Lu. The menu features a nice selection of Balkan- and Italian-inspired meals, including čevapčiči, pastas, and various fish entrées. It's not the most sophisticated food in the city, but that's partly why I like it. This is straightforward, family-style fare, the kind you might find in a tucked-away little restaurant in Sarajevo, or, better yet, on the dining table of a Balkan home.
Luka Lu describes itself as the child of an adventurous Italian father and a calm, simple Bosnian mother. This assessment makes perfect sense: the unpretentious food is, naturally, the work of the mama. And you only need to take one look at the interior design to see where the boisterous Italian side comes in.
Owner Veso Djorem's long culinary career has seen him open ten different restaurants in Prague and Sarajevo, including the now-defunct Dolly Bell in Vyšehrad and another Malá Strana spot called Gitanes. His ventures are known for their signature decorative style: colorful and cluttered, with the occasional upside-down table hanging from the ceiling.
Glance upwards in Luka Lu's front room and you'll see a fully-laid-out sewing table, complete with machine, half-finished garment, and a pair of fluffy slippers. Bright murals depict a cartoon-ish harbor, and wooden windows and a little balcony are superimposed on the walls. It's playful kitsch, warm and welcoming and entirely different from the morose minimalism espoused by so many Prague restaurants.
But the best part of the interior isn't even visible until you turn a corner and walk down a narrow hallway. That's where you'll find Luka Lu's winter garden, a beautiful, airy room with a glass ceiling, pretty tiles, and plenty of plants. There were a couple of new additions here on my last visit, neither of which I'm too sure about: a big soda fridge and a birdcage full of squawking parakeets. The fridge detracts from the atmosphere for obvious reasons; the birdcage does add some liveliness, but assorted avian debris had ended up on the table and chairs we were led to by the waitress. We ended up changing seats.
In the very back of Luka Lu is a beautiful outdoor courtyard with wooden plank floors and glowing lanterns. I discovered this gem of a garden a little too late for the summer season, but I'll be sure to remember it for next year. The service can be a bit slow – especially if you're sitting in the rear areas – and there's been the occasional mix-up on my visits there, but at least everyone's friendly and relaxed.
Luka Lu (which translates as Harbor Lu) has been designed to evoke a konoba, or traditional Croatian-style seaside restaurant equivalent to a Greek taverna. Fittingly, seafood is the specialty here. Besides the aforementioned traditionally prepared octopus (350 CZK), there are also fried anchovies and fried sardines (175 and 180 CZK, respectively), and various fresh fish prepared on the restaurant's lava grill.
Red meat lovers will appreciate some of the Balkan specialties, such as the tasty kebab-like čevapčiči (160 CZK for 10 pieces; they're not as good as some I've had in Sarajevo, but are still worth a try) and the rich pljeskavice (something like a hamburger patty) stuffed with cheese (195 CZK). I was especially impressed by a traditional lamb dish (285 CZK) made in a special pan called a sač – the meat was so juicy and tender it was falling off the bone.
The broken English on Luka Lu's website says that "Wicked tongues say that most people cross the Vltava river and stay in the Lesser Quarter because of [Luka Lu]'s untameable beauty and not because of good food and wine." They're selling themselves a little short. The atmosphere might be the big initial draw, but there's more to like than the pretty décor.
Just ask my brother. Octopus or no octopus, he's already itching to go again.
Luka Lu
Újezd 33
Praha 1 – Malá Strana
Tel: 257 212 388
images: lukalu.cz
Monday, October 13, 2008
Restaurant Review: Villa Richter
This review originally appeared in Czech translation in the 20/09/08 edition of Lidové Noviny.
Three restaurants, multiple terraces, an extensive wine cellar, and a newly-planted vineyard: no one could accuse Villa Richter of lacking ambition.
Anyone who'd undertake the necessarily substantial renovation of this castle-side Classicist summerhouse and its accompanying 7000 square meter property would have to prepare themselves for a formidable task. Built in the 1830s by architect Josef Peschka, the building was confiscated from the German Richter family in 1945 and eventually housed private apartments, the Cu
ban embassy, and the Communist Interior Ministry. After winning a ten-year-long restitution dispute during the 1990s, the Prague Castle decided to rent out the decaying Villa and its overgrown former vineyard to those who proposed the best project for the site's rejuvenation.
Just a couple of months ago, Villa Richter was opened to the public for the first time. Locals and tourists are free to walk its pretty grounds and enjoy either a Czech-style meal at the Piano Terra restaurant or a more upscale dinner upstairs at Piano Nobile. Or they can opt for coffee and a snack at Pergola, a vineyard-side outdoor café.
But will they want to?
At the very least, they'll come for the view. All of Villa Richter's restaurants boast stunning outdoor seating with vistas over Malá Strana, the castle, and beyond. Unfortunately, the Villa is also home to some pretty steep prices and a whole lot of uneven cooking.
Looking at Piano Terra's menu, it's hard not to immediately categorize it as a tourist trap. Although this is the less expensive restaurant option at Villa Richter, a 0.4l glass of Plzen will set you back 59 CZK. A bowl of kulajda (a traditional Czech soup made with potatoes, mushrooms and dill), meanwhile, is priced at 110 CZK. The prices are sure to scare off a few curious locals, but I wasn't put off right away. I've always wished there were more restaurants serving Czech food that isn't the usual hospoda grizzle – even if it would mean paying a little extra to get it (Café Savoy is one exception; another, apparently, is the Krogen Soldaten Svejk restaurant in Stockholm, where a friend of mine claims to have eaten better Czech food than she's ever had in a restaurant at home).
While the food at Piano Terra is of higher quality than you'd usually find at a Czech place, it doesn’t live up to the promise of its prices. The house specialty is a plate of Prague ham served with apple horseradish, gherkins, and pickled vegetables. The ham was juicy and the horseradish sweet and powerfully spicy, but for 290 CZK I'd hope for a čalamáda (pickled vegetable mix) that wasn't completely bland and bread that wasn't stale and crumbly. Although the Wienerschnitzel came with a great potato salad, the meat itself was chewy and dry and hadn't been pounded out thin enough. With a price tag of 390 CZK, one would expect the schnitzel to be damn near perfect.
Because of Piano Terra's sprawling terraces and lovely view, the food may not have to be perfect – at least for now. But when guests will have to retreat into the small, stuffy-looking indoor dining rooms in the wintertime, they may be less willing to overlook the flawed food and overblown prices.
The upstairs restaurant, Piano Nobile (not to be confused with Chateau Mcely's restaurant of the same name), seems to have accounted for this problem a little better than its neighbor. In addition to its outdoor terrace, it also features a gorgeous greenhouse dining room that takes full advantage of the city view. But the very nice atmosphere can't make up for the fact that the food here is expensive, pretentious, and not especially good.
Somebody in Piano Nobile's kitchen needs to have his or her palate checked. Dish after dish came out tasting strange – and not in a good or interesting way, either. When my companion ordered the cold cucumber soup with mint (210 CZK), I'd hoped it would be a crisp, refreshing summer starter. Instead, the distinctive taste of cucumber was muddled by some oddly sweet and vinegary flavors, and it was served lukewarm when it should have been ice-cold.
An entrée of smoked duck breast, served with corn, chanterelles, and a cognac sauce (650 CZK), was memorable only for the fact that the corn – which, by the way, was so dull and rubbery I had to wonder if it was of the freezer variety – had been mindlessly doused in that omnipresent crutch of the lazy chef: truffle oil. The fragrant oil completely overpowered the chanterelles, rendering them nothing more than a garnish when they should have been one of the dish's key components.
As in all art forms (and high cuisine is certainly one), the greatest masterpieces are born when the artist has the capacity to self-edit, to pare down his initial creative mess and let the essentials shine. A chef who insists on dumping lots of sugar and salt and vinegar and flavored oils into his food strangles the natural flavor of the main ingredient – and that, of course, is one we most want to savor.
The problem of the chef's heavy hand is one we see in local restaurants again and again, particularly in those that imagine they are serving upscale cuisine. Sometimes, the bells and whistles are designed to mask an inferior product, such as a slightly-stinky piece of fish; on other occasions, a chef lacking in confidence or skill hides behind too many ingredients and a plateful of fancy tricks. My guess is that a little bit of both is going on at Piano Nobile.
It's a shame about Villa Richter. It's a beautiful spot with solid service, good wine, and, naturally, that breathtaking view. But until they make the food worth my while – and my wallet – I don't think I'll be coming back.
Villa Richter
Staré zámecké schody 6
Praha 1 – Pražský hrad
Tel: 257 219 079
Open Mon-Sun 10:00 – 23:00
images: praguespoon.com, villarichter.cz
