Thanksgiving in Prague
For the last couple of years, my true love and I have spent American Thanksgiving traveling in Europe. While America’s travel industry is going nuts, late November is a pretty good time to avoid tourist crowds in Europe (if you don’t mind temperatures of 7°C/45°F. This year’s destination was Prague in the Czech Republic.
My true love had been there before, and in fact her visit was the hidden background for a post from a couple of years ago (here). I can’t recommend Prague highly enough. It is an amazing city rich in both medieval and art nouveau architecture and history, highly walkable, pretty reasonable in terms of prices, and very friendly. We stayed in the Casa Marcello, a converted convent in the Jewish Quarter and just a ten minute walk from the Old Town Square, the heart of the city.
Highlights included the Castle (Hradčany), which is actually a beautiful combination of churches, convents, palaces, and exhibits on the top of a high hill overlooking the city, a series of gorgeous and recently renovated museums (that seemed oddly sparse on the exhibits themselves), and the astronomical clock. More than anything else, though, we thoroughly enjoyed walking the streets that were intimate and magnificent at the same time, made even more magical by the city’s preparation for the Christmas markets that would open on our last day in the city.
We’re here to talk about food, though, aren’t we?
The tourist guides universally talk down the food (except for the beer, which gets high praise). You can understand that because like many central and eastern European cuisines, Czech food is recognized more for its heartiness than it is for its creativity. Doesn’t mean it isn’t good, though. Consider the meal on the right, from a friendly, warm, touristy spot near Old Town Square. HUGE dumplings, grilled duck, ham, roast potatoes, potato pancakes, sausages, and bacon. Not a vegetable, spice, or herb in sight. Delicious nevertheless. By the way, the beer that elicits hosannas from the tourist guides is simply Pilsner Urquell, a great pilsner usually available at any American convenience store.
As appetizing as that meal above may look, it wasn’t what we were looking for. One of the things I think is important about Kilt in the Kitchen is making (and eating) flavorful HEALTHY food. I had allowed myself some indulgences over time that needed correcting (ahem) and wasn’t about to sacrifice the last 20 lbs on six days of pork product and potatoes, so going traditional for our stay in Prague was not an option.
Our first excursion (lunch on the first day) was a very hip place called The Food Lab. I’m not sure why, but most of the restaurants we saw in Prague seem to have English names (with the exception of those with Italian names). I forgot to record the name of what I ordered, but the waiter said that it was the Czech national dish. It was pretty basic but pretty great – a sausage patty cooked like a burger sitting on top of a piece of delicious focaccia with a sour cream/romesco spread. It was as delicious as it was simple. The lunch also ended with our first encounter with Czech tipping.
I hate the concept of tipping, but if we think that tipping is a good thing, I’d love it if every country in the world could agree on how tipping should work. In Prague, the server brings the credit card machine to the table, processes the transaction and then hands you the machine while he/she looks over your shoulder to see how much of a tip they are getting. At the Food Lab I miscalculated the amount and when I realized it, I was mortified that I gave our server a 1% tip (I calculated in euros but the amount was in Czech Koruna). It made it even worse that the server saw me do it. Ugh.
That night we went to the Blue Fjord, a seafood restaurant and market near the hotel. The “market” part makes it an interesting concept. When you walk in, it looks like a seafood market with slabs of fish, piles of shrimp and octopus and so one stacked on ice. The idea is that you pick the fish you want and for 50 Kc ($2.25) they’ll cook it up and serve it to you. This might be a good place to mention that food in Prague is amazingly inexpensive. We really overindulged here (see below) but the bill for two with tip, tax, and beer was only a little over $100.
On the first night, we ordered a fish soup that was utterly fantastic and then a whole Branzino and an assortment of shellfish. We remembered to take a picture of the soup but when the main course came, we were too excited to take photos. You couldn’t ask for fresher fish or a simpler, better preparation. Hot fire, salt, pepper, oil, garlic, fish. That’s all you need.
We like the Blue Fjord so much on Thursday that we went back again on Friday. And again on Saturday, where we went totally bananas. You’ve heard of the Feast of the Seven Fishes? We must have had the Feast of the Twenty-Seven Fishes. Totally over the top but totally enjoyable. The experience was made even better by the warm, friendly vibes of the staff (who recognized us right away by the third night) and the comfy atmosphere. If you like seafood and you are ever in Prague, you have to go here.
That we went to the same restaurant three times in a foreign city is a reflection of how we’ve changed in our approach to dining out when traveling. It used to be that I insisted on going to a different restaurant for every meal, working hard at sampling everything our host city had to offer. That changed when we visited Istanbul a few years ago and wound up going to a couple of favorite restaurants twice. There’s something to be said for capping off a day of tourist activity with a lovely leisurely dinner and if you’ve found a place you like, why NOT go back?
We carried that to extremes in Prague. Not only did we have dinner three times at the same place, we had lunch twice at the same place, Restaurace Kolonial near the famous Charles Bridge. The first time we went we had intended to go to Hradčany but the weather turned bad and we needed a place to shelter and have lunch while we figured out what would come next. The Kolonial was just perfect, a lovely, slightly edgy restaurant with gracious staff and a menu that I could only describe as “new” Czech in the way that U.S. restaurants describe themselves as “new” American. The next day we found ourselves nearby at lunch time and actually had an even better experience.
Two more things before I go. The Prague Christmas markets opened on the Saturday of our visit and the city squares were busy with activity on Thursday and Friday getting ready. Food is a HUGE part of the market activity with several booths offering hot mulled wine, hot chocolate, trdelnik (a hot rolled pastry), more candy than you could believe possible, sausages, skewered chicken and sausages, ice cream (!), and, most important, šunka. This is a pork shoulder cooked on a rotisserie over a wood fire and served with a heaping pile of sauerkraut and potatoes.
There were easily a half-dozen stands selling this deliciousness and the only thing I could have asked for to make it better would have been a warm table to sit down with a beer and a plate of šunka. It gives me a reason to go back.
Finally, and although this doesn’t have a lot to do with food I can’t let it go. Nearly every block in Prague’s Old Town has a mini-market, but it isn’t the convenience store that we Americans are used to. There’s no soda fountain, no shelves full of chips, no deli, no magazines, and I didn’t see cigarettes (although they were probably around somewhere). Instead, you get glittery bottles of vodka and other spirits, beer, wine, tourist gifts (I found a “Russian” doll that went from Tom Brady to Rob Gronkowski), and big jars of cannabis. Seriously. I know that Prague has a reputation of being a party town where young men from all over Europe (but especially the U.K.) enjoy cheap air fares and inexpensive alcohol to have the time of their lives every weekend or so, but we saw none of that. Really – no out of control behavior whatsoever, but I did see more vodka than I’ve ever seen in my life, not to mention the cannabis jars in shop windows.
Not that this affected us, of course. I was too interested in the art nouveau architecture, the medieval churches, the šunka, the trdelnik, and the Christmas ornaments to get distracted.