Before the purists start having a go, I'm using the term Smörgåsbord in a literary sense here - namely to describe a wide range of delicious hot and cold food that should be enough to whet any appetite.
Prior to moving to Prague, one of my oldest memories from a previous business trip to the city in 2000 was going to a restaurant with my colleagues and ordering a three meat roast. When the meal arrived, I nearly suffered from a protein overdose by merely looking at it (no photos sadly, long before we had cameras on phones!). The dish consisted of a wooden platter with three huge slabs of meat - beef, pork and mutton - beautifully cooked - but each one would have been enough for two or three people, never mind all three for one person. There wasn't a vegetable in sight! Even now, I still joke to people that the Czech concept of a vegetarian dish is a smaller plate of meat.
Times were changing even in 2000 as the Czech Republic was casting off its shackles of communist rule. Today the city hosts restaurants serving food from every corner of the globe whilst not losing sight of one of the main values of Czech cuisine - big portions and small prices. I've eaten in Afghan, Argentinian, Brazilian, Belgian, Chinese, Indian, and Thai restaurants, and I know of Lebanese, Greek, Turkish, and Spanish places that come highly recommended.
I can't speak for the rest of the country, but Prague has come a long way from the days of food shortages and a dearth of vegetables. Supermarkets and farmer's markets like the ones at Náplavka and Jiřího z Poděbrad have fruit and vegetable stalls with an abundance of familiar and exotic ingredients. I have travelled all around the world and consider myself well versed in epicurean matters, but I regularly find strange looking fruit and veg that I've never come across before. I suspect much of this is due to the influence of the Vietnamese who were invited to settle in the country during the communist era.
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| No shortage of fruit and veg these days - and the dog isn't on the menu |
But all this talk of foreign food is a red herring (so to speak) because I really wanted to write about some of my favourite local specialities, which I have grown to love and even try and reproduce when I'm back in the UK (to varying degrees of success).
As a visitor to Prague, your first experience of Czech food should be in a proper ‘hospoda’ or pub, rather than a fancy restaurant. After all, when in Rome… This way you’ll get to see a typical selection of classic Czech dishes while you’re enjoying a glass of beer. Not only that, but you’ll get a great meal at a bargain price - as long as you haven’t gone to one of the places in the heart of the main tourist areas (find somewhere a few hundred metres down a back street!). Most places will have menus in English and the translations can be quite amusing, but don’t take them literally. Whippet cream on your strudel does not originate in the genital tract of a racing dog! You may be put off by some of the names of dishes - pork cheek or knee may not sound too enticing to sensitive UK but do not miss out just because it’s not a cut of meat we’d often use at home.
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| Whippet cream anyone? |
Look around you, and you’ll see quite a lot of people eating goulash (Hovezí guláš) a rich, heart beef stew with a distinctive red tint from the most essential ingredient, spicy paprika. It may be served as a soup, with bread dumplings, or in a hollowed out bread loaf. Goulash is usually thought of as a Hungarian dish, but is common across Central Europe, each country having its own slight variation. The main Czech differentiator is the use of marjoram and caraway seeds.
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| Homemade goulash back in the UK (with potato pancakes) |
Bread dumplings (knedlíky) and potato dumplings (bramborové knedlíky) are Czech staples and are great for mopping up the delicious sauces (and soaking up the beer). I’ve made both at home, and while the end results were more than satisfactory, there was an awful lot of mess in the kitchen by the time I’d finished. I suspect most of my Czech friends can make these with their eyes closed.
Potato dumplings are a traditional accompaniment for another Czech classic, Roast Duck (pečená kachna), usually also served with braised red cabbage or sauerkraut. The duck is slowly roasted and the end result is a crispy, spicy and herby skin hiding beautifully moist and succulent meat underneath. There are places in the city specialising in duck, and as you walk in you can see a huge spit roaster with dozens of birds being cooked at a time.
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| Delicious roast duck at a specialist duck pub |
I mentioned earlier some of the pork cuts that are often used in Czech cooking - knee and knuckle being prime examples. Roast pork knuckle (Pečene vepřové koleno) cooked in dark Czech beer may not sound too appetising but it is a sensational dish. The meat is marinated overnight with garlic, mustard, salt, pepper, paprika and caraway rubbed into the skin and then basted with dark beer, allspice and bay leaves before being roasted. These joints can be a little fatty for some people, but the taste is sublime, and the meat falls off the bone and melts in your mouth. The dish is often served on a huge wooden platter, and I never fail to be amused at the look on people’s faces when they see a waiter carrying this enormous serving to the table. It's usually accompanied with some pickled green chilli, mustard and horseradish and chunks of homemade bread. As an aside, horseradish is not reserved for use with roast beef like it is in the UK. You can expect to find it served with beef, pork and sausages, usually freshly grated with a little cream, and packing quite a punch!
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| Pork knee in dark beer - a modest serving this time |
In a later post I'll carry on with some other classic Czech dishes, including some of the more esoteric pub snacks you may encounter.
Dobrou chut! (Bon appétit).
